Interplay of surface interaction and magnetic torque in single-cell motion of magnetotactic bacteria in microfluidic confinement

  1. Agnese Codutti
  2. Mohammad A Charsooghi
  3. Elisa Cerdá-Doñate
  4. Hubert M Taïeb
  5. Tom Robinson  Is a corresponding author
  6. Damien Faivre  Is a corresponding author
  7. Stefan Klumpp  Is a corresponding author
  1. Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany
  2. CEA Cadarache, France
  3. University of Göttingen, Germany

Abstract

Swimming microorganisms often experience complex environments in their natural habitat. The same is true for microswimmers in envisioned biomedical applications. The simple aqueous conditions typically studied in the lab differ strongly from those found in these environments and often exclude the effects of small volume confinement or the influence that external fields have on their motion. In this work, we investigate magnetically steerable microswimmers, specifically magnetotactic bacteria, in strong spatial confinement and under the influence of an external magnetic field. We trap single cells in micrometer-sized microfluidic chambers and track and analyze their motion, which shows a variety of different trajectories, depending on the chamber size and the strength of the magnetic field. Combining these experimental observations with simulations using a variant of an active Brownian particle model, we explain the variety of trajectories by the interplay between the wall interactions and the magnetic torque. We also analyze the pronounced cell-to-cell heterogeneity, which makes single-cell tracking essential for an understanding of the motility patterns. In this way, our work establishes a basis for the analysis and prediction of microswimmer motility in more complex environments.

Data availability

All data (experimental and simulatedl trajectories) as well as analysis and simulation code has been deposited at Edmond, https://doi.org/10.17617/3.7b

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Agnese Codutti

    Biomaterials Department, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Mohammad A Charsooghi

    Biomaterials Department, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Elisa Cerdá-Doñate

    Biomaterials Department, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Hubert M Taïeb

    Biomaterials Department, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-7530-8988
  5. Tom Robinson

    Theory and Bio‐systems Department, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany
    For correspondence
    tom.robinson@mpikg.mpg.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5236-7179
  6. Damien Faivre

    BIAM, CEA Cadarache, Saint Paul lez Durance, France
    For correspondence
    damien.faivre@cea.fr
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6191-3389
  7. Stefan Klumpp

    Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Systems, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
    For correspondence
    stefan.klumpp@phys.uni-goettingen.de
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0584-2146

Funding

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (KL 818/2-2)

  • Stefan Klumpp

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (FA 835/7-2)

  • Damien Faivre

BMBF and Max Planck Society (MaxSynBio)

  • Tom Robinson

IMPRS on Multiscale Biosystems (n/a)

  • Agnese Codutti

IMPRS on Multiscale Biosystems (n/a)

  • Elisa Cerdá-Doñate

IMPRS on Multisclale Biosystems (n/a)

  • Hubert M Taïeb

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2022, Codutti et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Agnese Codutti
  2. Mohammad A Charsooghi
  3. Elisa Cerdá-Doñate
  4. Hubert M Taïeb
  5. Tom Robinson
  6. Damien Faivre
  7. Stefan Klumpp
(2022)
Interplay of surface interaction and magnetic torque in single-cell motion of magnetotactic bacteria in microfluidic confinement
eLife 11:e71527.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71527

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71527

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