Direct optical monitoring of flow generated by bacterial flagellar rotation

Abstract

We report on a highly sensitive approach to measure and quantify the time dependent changes of the flow generated by the flagella bundle rotation of single bacterial cells. This is achieved by observing the interactions between a silica particle and a bacterium, which are both trapped next to each other in a dual beam optical tweezer. In this configuration, the particle serves as a sensitive detector where the fast-Fourier analysis of the particle trajectory renders, it possible to access information about changes of bacterial activity.