@article{200811,
  keywords = {Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer, Temperature, signal transduction, Adaptation, Physiological, Microfluidic Analytical Techniques, Bacterial Proteins/genetics/metabolism, *infectious disease, *microbiology, Aspartic Acid/pharmacology, Chemotactic Factors/*pharmacology, Escherichia coli K12/*drug effects/genetics/growth \& development/metabolism, Escherichia coli Proteins/*genetics/metabolism, *Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial, Green Fluorescent Proteins/genetics/metabolism, Luminescent Proteins/genetics/metabolism, Methyl-Accepting Chemotaxis Proteins/*genetics/metabolism, Receptors, Cell Surface/*genetics/metabolism, Recombinant Fusion Proteins/genetics/metabolism, Serine/pharmacology, Taxis Response/*physiology, *E. coli, *bacterial motility, *chemotaxis, *computational biology, *environmental sensing, *signal transduction, *systems biology, *temperature, *thermotaxis},
  author = {A. Paulick and V. Jakovljevic and S. Zhang and M. Erickstad and A. Groisman and Y. Meir and W. S. Ryu and N. S. Wingreen and V. Sourjik},
  title = {Mechanism of bidirectional thermotaxis in Escherichia coli},
  abstract = { In bacteria various tactic responses are mediated by the same cellular pathway, but sensing of physical stimuli remains poorly understood. Here, we combine an in-vivo analysis of the pathway activity with a microfluidic taxis assay and mathematical modeling to investigate the thermotactic response of Escherichia coli. We show that in the absence of chemical attractants E. coli exhibits a steady thermophilic response, the magnitude of which decreases at higher temperatures. Adaptation of wild-type cells to high levels of chemoattractants sensed by only one of the major chemoreceptors leads to inversion of the thermotactic response at intermediate temperatures and bidirectional cell accumulation in a thermal gradient. A mathematical model can explain this behavior based on the saturation-dependent kinetics of adaptive receptor methylation. Lastly, we find that the preferred accumulation temperature corresponds to optimal growth in the presence of the chemoattractant serine, pointing to a physiological relevance of the observed thermotactic behavior. },
  year = {2017},
  journal = {Elife},
  volume = {6},
  edition = {20170803},
  month = {08/2017},
  isbn = {2050-084x},
  language = {eng},
}