Berlin 2015 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 16: Microswimmers - Part I (joint session DY/ BP/ CPP)
DY 16.3: Talk
Tuesday, March 17, 2015, 10:00–10:15, BH-N 128
Characterization of Swimming Bacillus Subtilis — •Javad Najafi1, Thomas John1, Gert Bange2, and Christian Wagner1 — 1Experimental Physics, Saarland University, D-66123 Saarbruecken, Germany — 2LOEWE Center for Synthetic Microbiology (Synmikro), Marburg, Germany
Bacteria can use flexible appendages called flagella to swim in aqueous environment. Our goal is to understand the influence of the number of flagella on the swimming behavior and efficiency. We study wild type strain of bacillus subtilis as a model system to unravel a few fundamental questions on swimming behavior of bacteria. Our micro-organism is a peritrichous bacterium with about 25 flagella, and uses run and tumble strategy to explore its surrounding. Using dark field microscopy and tracking of single cell movements, we calculate statistics of swimming velocity, running and tumbling times, turning angles, diffusion coefficients and the temporal auto-correlations in changes of swimming directions. In further steps, we will investigate the influence of number of flagella on genetically engineered bacillus subtilus in aforementioned quantities.