ArticleNature microbiology2024
Individual bacterial cells can use spatial sensing of chemical gradients to direct chemotaxis on surfaces.
Article in Nature microbiology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- The iron paradox and particle size sensing: transcriptomic response ofApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- An inhalable gallium-polyphenol nanoparticle blocks bacterial electron transport chain and signal transduction for anti-biofilm therapy.Bioactive materials · 2026Article
- The type IV pilus steering committee: how Pil-Chp controls directional motility.Journal of bacteriology · 2025Review
- Self-propulsive active nematics.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Article
- Intermediate light adaptation induces oscillatory phototaxis switching and pattern formation inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The Role of Anode Potential in Electromicrobiology.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Individual-based modeling unravels spatial and social interactions in bacterial communities.The ISME journal · 2025Review
- Two-step localization driven by peptidoglycan hydrolase in interbacterial predation.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Building permits-control of type IV pilus assembly by PilB and its cofactors.Journal of bacteriology · 2024Review
- A year of microbiology.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Identification of pathways to high-level vancomycin resistance in Clostridioides difficile that incur high fitness costs in key pathogenicity traits.PLoS biology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Swimming bacteria navigate chemical gradients using temporal sensing to detect changes in concentration over time. Here we show that surface-attached bacteria use a fundamentally different mode of sensing during chemotaxis. We combined microfluidic experiments, massively parallel cell tracking and fluorescent reporters to study how Pseudomonas aeruginosa senses chemical gradients during pili-based 'twitching' chemotaxis on surfaces. Unlike swimming cells, we found that temporal changes in concentration did not induce motility changes in twitching cells. We then quantified the chemotactic behaviour of stationary cells by following changes in the sub-cellular localization of fluorescent proteins as cells are exposed to a gradient that alternates direction. These experiments revealed that P. aeruginosa cells can directly sense differences in concentration across the lengths of their bodies, even in the presence of strong temporal fluctuations. Our work thus overturns the widely held notion that bacterial cells are too small to directly sense chemical gradients in space.
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Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.