Quantitative analysis of bacterial migration in chemotaxis.

Abstract

THERE are a number of parallels between the chemotactic response of bacteria and the process of chemoreception in higher organisms1, 2. Because of this analogy, the chemotactic response presents an unusual opportunity in a simple system for delineating some of the features of a receptor system. Adler and co-workers3–5, for example, have made particularly important advances in studies on Escherichia coli which indicate that (a) the galactose binding protein6, 7 is the receptor which triggers the chemotactic response5 and (b) the response occurs with non-metabolizableanalogues of galactose3.