A simple expression for quantifying bacterial chemotaxis using capillary assay data: Application to the analysis of enhanced chemotactic responses from growth-limited cultures (Q1193508)

An individual cell-based mathematical model provides a framework for determining values of the chemotactic sensitivity coefficient \(\chi{_ 0}\), an intrinsic cell population parameter that characterizes the chemotactic response of bacterial populations. This coefficient can theoretically relate the swimming behavior of individual cells to the resulting migration of a bacterial population. When this model is applied to the commonly used capillary assay, an approximate solution can be obtained for a particular range of chemotactic strengths yielding a very simple analytical expression for estimating the value of \(\chi{_ 0}\).