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Bacterial Thermotaxis: How do bacteria sense and respond to temperature changes?
We are studying how bacteria find and choose safe environments for their growth when they are subjected to changes in temperature. Our research aims to understand how bacteria navigate their way through an environment, where the temperature at different locations is different, by sensing the changes in temperature along their path. We also look how temperature changes the bacteria and their behavior along that journey. A better understanding of these questions may help us in the future develop artificial biological sensors. In addition, since bacteria can utilize temperature sensing to locate and infect host cells, a better understanding of bacterial thermotaxis can help us develop treatments to prevent bacterial infections.
Collective Dynamics: How do bacteria communicate and coordinate their behavior?
Cells in a population often communicate with each other to coordinate their behavior and motion. This can help them reach their targets faster and protect themselves from invasion by predators, or in the case of bacteria can even help them resist treatments with antibiotics. Bacteria communicate by secreting chemicals, which can influence the behavior of neighboring cells and/or attract them to create an aggregate of cells that can move together or colonize certain regions. Our research aims to understand the different mechanisms of cell-cell communication and more importantly, how this communication affects the behavior of the population. This can shed light on the benefits of cell-cell communication to the population's survival and help us understand how to manipulate it to our benefit.
Our research aims to understand the mechanisms of collective behavior and variability in bacterial cultures and their effect on the response of bacteria to changes in the environment. The continuous interaction between the environment and living organisms is one of the main effectors of evolution. There are many known strategies of responding to environmental changes, e.g. by changing the swimming pattern or the gene expression profile. And although many strategies are single-cell based, we often see cooperative behavior arising among members of the colony under certain conditions. By studying the changes in the behavior of bacteria as a function of their concentration, we are able to detect some of the collective mechanisms that govern the bacterial behavior and allow them to better endure environmental stress. Environmental changes that interest us are thermal and chemical. We utilize various optical microscopy techniques to observe the swimming pattern of bacteria under different conditions. As for the expression level of proteins, proteins of interest are labeled with fluorescent markers and the expression level is measured using fluorescence microscopy or flow cytometry.