How flagellated bacteria wobble

TL;DR

This study uses mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations to analyze the wobbling motions of flagellated bacteria, revealing new insights into their precession, nutation, and spin behaviors that align with experimental observations.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation-based method to quantify bacterial wobbling motions and uncovers that bacteria do not undergo complete spin cycles, challenging previous assumptions.

Findings

Simulations match experimental wobbling periods of E. coli.

Identifies two precession modes consistent with theory.

Observes small-amplitude periodic nutation in bacteria.

Abstract

A flagellated bacterium navigates fluid environments by rotating its helical flagellar bundle. The wobbling of the bacterial body significantly influences its swimming behavior. To quantify the three underlying motions--precession, nutation, and spin, we extract the Euler angles from trajectories generated by mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations, which is experimentally unattainable. In contrast to the common assumption, the cell body does not undergo complete cycles of spin, a general result for multiflagellated bacteria. Our simulations produce apparent wobbling periods that closely match the results of {\it E. coli} obtained from experiments and reveal the presence of two kinds of precession modes, consistent with theoretical analysis. Small-amplitude yet periodic nutation is also observed in the simulations.