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LOS ANGELES -- Bacteria share characteristics with Batman - or at least his grappling hook.
Dr. Gerard Wong, a professor of bioengineering and of chemistry and biochemistry at UCLA, and his team have described the jerking motility of the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a biofilm-forming pathogen involved in cystic fibrosis.
Using type IV pili, the bacteria travel in a "slingshot" movement. Using several pili attached to a nearby surface, the bacteria first move at a constant rate, very slowly, as they pull themselves along. But when one of the pili detaches from a nearby surface, the bacteria take off like a rocket, moving up to 20 times faster than normal through the sticky polysaccharides they secrete when forming a biofilm.
Imagine Batman shooting his grappling hook to travel through a wave of molasses rolling through the streets of Gotham City.
Their speed means more than just a quick journey for them. It allows them to change direction and adapt to the continually changing surface conditions as they form biofilms.
"Because these polysaccharides are long polymer molecules that can get entangled, these are very viscous and can potentially impede movement," Wong said in a press release. "However, if you move very fast in these polymer fluids, the viscosity becomes much lower compared to when you're moving slowly. The fluid will then seem more like water than molasses."
Because their twitching movement leaves marks specific to each bacteria's pili, Wong hopes this unique identifier could be used for single-cell diagnostics.
"It gives us the possibility of not just identifying species of bacteria but the possibility of also identifying individual cells. Perhaps in the future, we can look at a cell and try to find the same cell later on the basis of how it moves," he said.
The study will be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
