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Physics of swimming and its fitness cost determine strategies of bacterial investment in flagellar motility
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Physics of swimming and its fitness cost determine strategies of bacterial investment in flagellar motility
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Journal Article
Physics of swimming and its fitness cost determine strategies of bacterial investment in flagellar motility
2025
Overview
Microorganisms must distribute their limited resources among different physiological functions, including those that do not directly contribute to growth. In this study, we investigate the allocation of resources to flagellar swimming, the most prominent and biosynthetically costly of such cellular functions in bacteria. Although the growth-dependence of flagellar gene expression in peritrichously flagellated
Escherichia coli
is well known, the underlying physiological limitations and regulatory strategies are not fully understood. By characterizing the dependence of motile behavior on the activity of the flagellar regulon, we demonstrate that, beyond a critical number of filaments, the hydrodynamics of propulsion limits the ability of bacteria to increase their swimming by synthesizing additional flagella. In nutrient-rich conditions,
E. coli
apparently maximizes its motility until reaching this limit, while avoiding the excessive cost of flagella production. Conversely, during carbon-limited growth motility remains below maximal levels and inversely correlates with the growth rate. The physics of swimming may further explain the selection for bimodal resource allocation in motility at low average expression levels. Notwithstanding strain-specific variation, the expression of flagellar genes in all tested natural isolates of
E. coli
also falls within the same range defined by the physical limitations on swimming and its biosynthetic cost.
Microbial strategies for allocating limited resources to different cellular functions remain to be fully understood. Lisevich et al. show how the interplay between general physical and context-dependent physiological limitations determines resource allocation into a major bacterial cellular function, motility.
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
Subject
/ 96/31
/ E coli
/ Escherichia coli - metabolism
/ Escherichia coli - physiology
/ Escherichia coli Proteins - genetics
/ Escherichia coli Proteins - metabolism
/ Flagella
/ Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial
/ Humanities and Social Sciences
/ Motility
/ Movement
/ Physics
/ Regulon
/ Science
/ Swimming
