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Journal of Bacteriology, October 2008, p. 6811-6816, Vol. 190, No. 20
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00662-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Chemotaxis as an Emergent Property of a Swarm{triangledown} ,{dagger}

Rion G. Taylor and Roy D. Welch*

Department of Biology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244

Received 12 May 2008/ Accepted 6 August 2008

We have characterized and quantified a form of bacterial chemotaxis that manifests only as an emergent property by measuring symmetry breaking in a swarm of Myxococcus xanthus exposed to a two-dimensional nutrient gradient from within an agar substrate. M. xanthus chemotaxis requires cell-cell contact and coordinated motility, as individual motile cells exhibit only nonvectorial movement in the presence of a nutrient gradient. Genes that specifically affect M. xanthus chemotaxis include at least 10 of the 53 that express enhancer binding proteins of the NtrC-like class, an indication that this behavior is controlled through transcription, most likely by a complex signal transduction network.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: 130 College Place, BRL, Rm. 702A, Syracuse, NY 13244. Phone: (315) 443-2159. Fax: (315) 443-2012. E-mail: rowelch{at}syr.edu

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 22 August 2008.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://jb.asm.org/.

Journal of Bacteriology, October 2008, p. 6811-6816, Vol. 190, No. 20
0021-9193/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.00662-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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