Abstract

This article demonstrates a new approach enabling the active control of swimming trajectories of flagellated bacteria in space and time. Bacteria were mixed with water solutions of disodium cromoglycate (DSCG), a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal (LCLC) that mimics the anisotropic properties of many biological environments. It has been well established that the bacteria then swim in the direction of the self-aligned molecular aggregates of DSCG. It is also known that this host material possesses a diamagnetic anisotropy enabling the control of the local orientation of these aggregates with magnetic fields (MF). This double coupling (bacteria-LCLC & LCLC-MF) allows the efficient real-time control of the orientation of bacterial trajectories. Such control over the motility of microorganisms opens numerous avenues for their manipulation and study, for example, in a lab-on-a-chip device.

摘要

本文演示了一种新方法，该方法可以主动控制时空鞭毛细菌的游泳轨迹。将细菌与色甘酸二钠（DSCG）的水溶液混合，该溶液是一种可溶的发色液晶（LCLC），可模拟许多生物环境的各向异性。众所周知，细菌然后朝着DSCG自对准分子聚集体的方向游动。还已知该基质材料具有抗磁性各向异性，该各向异性使得能够利用磁场（MF）控制这些聚集体的局部取向。这种双重耦合（细菌LCLC和LCLC-MF）可以有效实时控制细菌轨迹的方向。