Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Role Of Hydrodynamic Interactions In Chemotaxis Of Bacterial Populations, Shawn D. Ryan

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

How bacteria sense local chemical gradients and decide to move has been a fascinating area of recent study. Chemotaxis of bacterial populations has been traditionally modeled using either individual-based models describing the motion of a single bacterium as a velocity jump process, or macroscopic PDE models that describe the evolution of the bacterial density. In these models, the hydrodynamic interaction between the bacteria is usually ignored. However, hydrodynamic interaction has been shown to induce collective bacterial motion and self-organization resulting in larger mesoscale structures. In this paper, the role of hydrodynamic interactions in bacterial chemotaxis is investigated by extending a …