Enhancement of Bacterial Motility by Speed-Dependent Nutrient Absorption

M.E. DI SALVO; C.A. CONDAT

PHYSICAL BIOLOGY

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2014 vol. 11 p. 1 - 10

1478-3967

Marine microorganisms often reach high swimming speeds, either to take advantage of evanescent nutrient patches or to beat Brownian forces. Since this implies that a sizable part of their energetic budget must be allocated to motion, it is reasonable to assume that some fast-swimming microorganisms may increase their nutrient intake by increasing their speed v. We formulate a model to investigate this hypothesis and its consequences, finding the steady state solutions and analyzing their stability. Surprisingly, we find that even modest increases in nutrient absorption may lead to a significant increase of the microbial speed. In fact, evaluations obtained using realistic parameter values for bacteria indicate that the speed increase due to the enhanced nutrient absorption may be quite large.