LONDON: Biophysicists have revealed that fast-swimming, sulfur-eating microbes known as Thiovulum majus can organize themselves into a two-dimensional lattice composed of rotating cells, the first known example of bacteria spontaneously forming such a pattern.
“The regular, repeated arrangement of the microbial cells shares the geometry of atoms within a mineral crystal, but the dynamics are fundamentally different; the bacterial crystals constantly move and reorganize as a result of the power generated by individual cells within them,” says study author Albert Libchaber, Detlev W. Bronk Professor and head of the Laboratory of Experimental Condensed Matter Physics.
The single cells’ rotating motion — which forms the crystals by drawing in other cells and then powers the crystals’ own motion — led the researchers to dub them “microscopic tornadoes” in a paper awaiting publication in Physical Review Letters.
It’s no coincidence that Thiovulum majus is among the fastest swimming bacteria known. Capable of moving up to 60 body lengths per second while rotating rapidly, these microbes propel themselves using whip-like flagella that cover their surfaces. But in its natural habitat, deep in marsh water, these microbes don’t travel much. They tether themselves to a surface and use their flagella to generate a current strong enough to pull in the nutrients they need: sulfides from rotting organic matter and oxygen used to burn the sulfides.
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