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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 17: Poster V

BP 17.15: Poster

Dienstag, 17. März 2020, 14:00–16:00, P2/1OG

Dynamics of light-sensing microbial populations in microfluidic model habitats — •Sebastian Raum, Alexandros Fragkopoulos, and Oliver Bäumchen — Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS), D-37077 Göttingen, Germany

The natural habitats of many microorganisms are complex porous environments, where surface interactions of the cells play an important role, e.g., for navigation and survival of cell populations. By performing phototaxis, photosynthetic microbes are able to migrate towards optimal light conditions, where they can eventually adhere to surfaces. The goal of our work is to study the competition between surface interactions, light-regulated motility and surface adhesion. We designed an experimental setup that mimics the natural environment of the microorganisms and simultaneously allows for precisely tailoring the light conditions. A suspension of the light sensing Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cells is confined in a quasi-two-dimensional microfluidic compartment consisting of randomly distributed circular pillars. We account for natural light gradients by using an optical density filter for the illumination of the model habitat. Measurements of the spatial cell distributions are conducted in blue and red light, in order to switch the cellular light responses on and off. We test the hypothesis that the interplay of phototaxis and light-regulated adhesiveness represents an evolutionary adaptation to optimize the cell’s photosynthetic efficiency in their natural habitat.