Cellular memory enhances bacterial chemotactic navigation in rugged environments

Congratulations to Dr Adam Gosztolai (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and Prof Mauricio Barahona from the CMMPH on their recent publication.

In thier recent paper in the in Communications Physics (Nature group), the question we asked was whether the gradient-sensing mechanism was sufficient to describe how cells swim in rugged environments that more realistically mimic natural microbial habitats, or if cells took advantage of this intrinsic scale in the medium to improve their chemotactic capabilities. This computations showed that in rugged landscapes, cells with memory resulting from their biochemical circuits swam faster than predicted by a pure gradient-sensing mechanism. 

There is also a blog post explaining the details.