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Adaptation of the chemotaxis sensory pathway of the bacterium Escherichia coli is integral for detecting chemicals over a wide range of background concentrations, ultimately allowing cells to swim towards sources of attractant and away from…
Bacterial chemotaxis is controlled by the signalling of a cluster of receptors. A cooperative model is presented, in which coupling between neighbouring receptor dimers enhances the sensitivity with which stimuli can be detected, without…
To successfully navigate chemical gradients, microorganisms need to predict how the ligand concentration changes in space. Due to their limited size, they do not take a spatial derivative over their body length but rather a temporal…
We show how the competition between sensing and adaptation can result in a performance peak in E.coli chemotaxis using extensive numerical simulations in a detailed theoretical model. Receptor clustering amplifies the input signal coming…
Bacterial chemotaxis has long been viewed as operating near the physical limits of sensing, as originally articulated by Berg and Purcell. Recent information-theoretic analyses challenge this view, suggesting that Escherichia coli uses only…
Biological cells sense external chemical stimuli in their environment using cell-surface receptors. To increase the sensitivity of sensing, receptors often cluster, most noticeably in bacterial chemotaxis, a paradigm for signaling and…
In many sensory systems, transmembrane receptors are spatially organized in large clusters. Such arrangement may facilitate signal amplification and the integration of multiple stimuli. However, this organization likely also affects the…
Chemotaxis in bacteria such as \textit{E.\ coli} is controlled by the slow methylation of chemoreceptors. As a consequence, intrinsic time and length scales of tens of seconds and hundreds of micrometers emerge, making the Keller--Segel…
Sensory systems have evolved to respond to input stimuli of certain statistical properties, and to reliably transmit this information through biochemical pathways. Hence, for an experimentally well-characterized sensory system, one ought to…
Robustness and sensitivity of responses generated by cell signaling networks has been associated with survival and evolvability of organisms. However, existing methods analyzing robustness and sensitivity of signaling networks ignore the…
Bacteria are often exposed to multiple stimuli in complex environments, and their efficient chemotactic decisions are critical to survive and grow in their native environments. Bacterial responses to the environmental stimuli depend on the…
Organisms use specialized sensors to measure their environments, but the fundamental principles that determine their accuracy remain largely unknown. In Escherichia coli chemotaxis, we previously found that gradient-climbing speed is…
Bacterial chemotaxis for E.coli is controlled by methylation of chemoreceptors, which in a biochemical pathway regulates the concentration of the CheY-P protein that finally controls the tumbling rate. As a consequence, the tumbling rate…
Most of our understanding of bacterial chemotaxis comes from studies of Escherichia coli. However, recent evidence suggests significant departures from the E. coli paradigm in other bacterial species. This variation may stem from different…
In response to a concentration gradient of nutrient, E. coli bacterium modulates the rotational bias of flagellar motors which control its run-and-tumble motion, to migrate towards regions of high nutrient concentration. Presence of…
Evolution has provided many organisms with sophisticated sensory systems that enable them to respond to signals in their environment. The response frequently involves alteration in the pattern of movement, such as the chemokinesis of the…
Bacteria can adjust their swimming behaviour in response to chemical variations, a phenomenon known as chemotaxis. This process is characterised by a drift velocity that depends non-linearly on the concentration of chemical species and its…
Escherichia coli has long been used as a model organism due to the extensive experimental characterization of its pathways and molecular components. Take chemotaxis as an example, which allows bacteria to sense and swim in response to…
Cells are often considered input-output devices that maximize the transmission of information by converting extracellular stimuli (input) via signaling pathways (communication channel) to cell behavior (output). However, in biological…
Many chemotactic bacteria inhabit environments in which chemicals appear as localized pulses and evolve by processes such as diffusion and mixing. We show that, in such environments, physical limits on the accuracy of temporal gradient…