quantitative modeling of escherichia coli chemotactic motion in environments varying in space and time定量建模大肠杆菌趋化运动的时间和空间在不同的环境中.pdfVIP

Quantitative Modeling of Escherichia coli Chemotactic Motion in Environments Varying in Space and Time Lili Jiang1,3, Qi Ouyang1,2, Yuhai Tu1,3* 1 Center for Theoretical Biology and School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China, 2 The State Key Laboratory for Artificial Microstructures and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China, 3 IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, United States of America Abstract Escherichia coli chemotactic motion in spatiotemporally varying environments is studied by using a computational model based on a coarse-grained description of the intracellular signaling pathway dynamics. We find that the cell’s chemotaxis drift velocity vd is a constant in an exponential attractant concentration gradient [L]/exp(Gx). vd depends linearly on the exponential gradient G before it saturates when G is larger than a critical value GC. We find that GC is determined by the intracellular adaptation rate kR with a simple scaling law: GC !k 1=2 . The linear dependence of vd on G = d(ln[L])/dx directly R demonstrates E. coli’s ability in sensing the derivative of the logarithmic attractant concentration. The existence of the limiting gradient GC and its scaling with kR are explained by the underlying intracellular adaptation dynamics and the flagellar motor response characteristics. For individual cells, we find that the overall average run length in an exponential gradient is longer than that in a homogeneous environment, which is caused by the constant kinase activity shift (decrease). The forward runs (up the gradient) are longer than the backward runs, as expected; and depending on the exact gradient, the (shorter) backward runs can be comparable to runs in a spatially homogeneous environm