Nature Communications (May 2019)

Bacterial hopping and trapping in porous media

  • Tapomoy Bhattacharjee,
  • Sujit S. Datta

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-10115-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

Read online

Many bacteria swim with run-and-tumble motion in unconfined fluid. Here the authors report that confinement of these bacteria in a 3D porous medium changes this motion into hopping and trapping, in which the cells are intermittently and transiently trapped as they navigate the pore space.