Swimming patterns of a multi-mode bacterial swimmer in fluid shear flow

TL;DR

This study investigates how fluid shear flow influences the swimming behavior of Pseudomonas putida, revealing mode-dependent alignment effects and the impact of shear stress on filament wrapping, supported by experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automated tracking tool and combines experimental and simulation approaches to analyze multi-mode bacterial swimming in shear flows, which was previously not well understood.

Findings

Shear flow causes mode-dependent bacterial alignment.

Motility and surface proximity reduce shear-induced alignment.

Filament wrapping efficiency decreases with higher shear stress.

Abstract

Bacterial swimming is well characterized in uniform liquids at rest. The natural habitat of bacterial swimmers, however, is often dominated by moving fluids and interfaces, resulting in shear flows that may strongly alter bacterial navigation strategies. Here, we study how fluid shear flow affects the swimming motility of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida, a bacterial swimmer that moves in a versatile pattern composed of three different swimming modes, where the flagella may push, pull, or wrap around the cell body (multi-mode swimmer). We introduce a computer automated cell tracking and swimming mode detection tool to show that shear induced alignment depends on the swimming mode, while motility and proximity to surfaces counteract the alignment effect. Moreover, filament wrapping becomes less efficient with increasing shear stress. Numerical simulations of realistic swimmer geometries complement our experimental results, providing more detailed mechanistic insights into movement patterns of bacterial swimmers in a shear flow.