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We investigate how the efficiency of E. coli chemotaxis depends on the external environment and the internal biochemical pathway of the E.coli cell. When the cell is in a medium where the nutrient is diffusing and the form of nutrient profile is Gaussian, we find that there exists an optimal width of the profile for which the search time becomes minimum. In the case when the nutrient diffusion and cell movement occurs over comparable time-scales, there exists an optimum value of the nutrient diffusivity for which the search time becomes minimum. The simulation results in a phenotype model agree well with our analytical calculations in a related coarse-grained model. In a single cell chemotaxis the internal biochemical pathway involves noise due to the fluctuations present in the number of different molecules taking part in the reactions. This noise plays a very crucial role on the chemotactic performance of E. coli bacterium. We find that in the long time limit the localization and the uptake, i.e. the total nutrient intercepted along its trajectories, becomes maximum for an optimum value of the noise strength. We discuss a simple mechanism to explain this effect.

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Subrata Dev, S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata, India
TP conference room 0.01
Contact: Joachim Krug