Escherichia coli as a model active colloid: A practical introduction.

The flagellated bacterium Escherichia coli is increasingly used experimentally as a self-propelled swimmer. To obtain meaningful, quantitative results that are comparable between different laboratories, reproducible protocols are needed to control, 'tune' and monitor the swimming behaviour of these motile cells. We critically review the knowledge needed to do so, explain methods for characterising the colloidal and motile properties of E. coli cells, and propose a protocol for keeping them swimming at constant speed at finite bulk concentrations. In the process of establishing this protocol, we use motility as a high-throughput probe of aspects of cellular physiology via the coupling between swimming speed and the proton motive force.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces

• Publication date

  2015-06-15

• Fields of study

  Biology, Physics, Materials Science, Chemistry, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.colsurfb.2015.07.048arXiv 1506.04562PMID 26310235
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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