Abstract

Most swimming bacteria are capable of following gradients of nutrients, signaling molecules and other environmental factors that affect bacterial physiology. This tactic behavior became one of the most-studied model systems for signal transduction and quantitative biology, and underlying molecular mechanisms are well characterized in Escherichia coli and several other model systems. In this review, we focus primarily on less understood aspect of bacterial chemotaxis, namely its physiological relevance for individual bacterial cells and for bacterial populations. As evident from multiple recent studies, even for the same bacterial species flagellar motility and chemotaxis might serve multiple roles, depending on the physiological and environmental conditions. Among these, finding sources of nutrients and more generally locating niches that are optimal for growth appear to be one of the major functions of bacterial chemotaxis, which could explain many chemoeffector preferences as well as flagellar gene regulation. Chemotaxis might also generally enhance efficiency of environmental colonization by motile bacteria, which involves intricate interplay between individual and collective behaviors and trade-offs between growth and motility. Finally, motility and chemotaxis play multiple roles in collective behaviors of bacteria including swarming, biofilm formation and autoaggregation, as well as in their interactions with animal and plant hosts.

中文翻译：

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鞭毛运动和趋化性在细菌生理学中的多种功能

摘要

大多数游泳细菌能够跟随营养梯度、信号分子和其他影响细菌生理的环境因素。这种策略行为成为信号转导和定量生物学研究最多的模型系统之一，并且在大肠杆菌中很好地表征了潜在的分子机制和其他几个模型系统。在这篇综述中，我们主要关注细菌趋化性的鲜为人知的方面，即其与单个细菌细胞和细菌种群的生理相关性。从最近的多项研究中可以明显看出，即使对于相同的细菌种类，鞭毛运动和趋化性也可能发挥多种作用，具体取决于生理和环境条件。其中，寻找营养来源和更普遍地定位最适合生长的生态位似乎是细菌趋化性的主要功能之一，这可以解释许多化学效应器的偏好以及鞭毛基因调控。趋化性通常也可能提高活动细菌在环境中定殖的效率，这涉及个人和集体行为之间复杂的相互作用以及生长和运动之间的权衡。最后，运动性和趋化性在细菌的集体行为中发挥多重作用，包括集群、生物膜形成和自动聚集，以及它们与动植物宿主的相互作用。