You’ve heard of #Lymedisease, but have you ever seen the bacteria that causes it? 🦠 Borrelia burgdorferi, the spiral-shaped culprit transmitted by ticks, swims with a creepy wriggling motion and uses #chemotaxis to navigate. Both fascinating... and disgusting #Microsky 🧪 #IDsky @shawlab.bsky.social

Like watching Salmonella swim around? We do!

In our revisions for our study in @elife.bsky.social we saw that #salmonella tolerates indole as long as nutrients are around, but the degree of their attraction depends on [indole].

Study: doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

🧪🦠 #Microsky #IDsky #Gastrosky

Bringing you your weekly update of chemotactic creepy crawlies.

Here is a strain of E. coli isolated from a urinary tract infection being attracted to human 💩. Yummy! Each white dot is a bacterium. Interestingly the cells shaped like long pool noodles seem less interested.

🦠🧫🧪 #IDsky #gastrosky

When E. coli gets a whiff of fresh 💩 it’s game on. They use chemotaxis to swim towards the source and enjoy the buffet of tasty L-serine, L-aspartate, glucose & other nutrients.

Bacteria do this inside your intestines everyday!

🧪🧫🦠 #IDsky #gastrosky #chemotaxis

🧪This mesmerizing green and purple cloud happens inside our gastrointestinal tract everyday! Swimming bacteria use chemotaxis to rapidly find nutrients. Takes only a few seconds.

WAY faster than phagocytes (~20 min). Bacteria will literally swim circles around them 🦠💨

#MicroSky #IDSky #GastroSky

Have you been impacted by stomach cancer, ulcers, or infection with Helicobacter pylori? Or an MD treating them?

We would love to connect with you and hear your story!

We are medical researchers developing new treatments for these gastric diseases 🔬

#GastroSky #Gastroenterology #cancer 🧪🦠

Our new study on bacterial #chemotaxis is out at @elife.bsky.social!

Key result is Salmonella loves 💩 and swims towards it, even though 💩 is also the major source of gut indole, a repellent. ‼️Knowing the response to a single effector doesn't easily predict bacterial taxis.

#MicroSky #IDSky 🦠🧪

Observation on bacterial chemotaxis related to chemorepulsion: maybe happens faster than chemattraction? 🦠💨 For Salmonella we see attraction needs 1-2 min, but repulsion from indole only ~10 s. #Microbiology #Chemotaxis 🧪 🦠

We have a better setup now, but this was an early ‘success’ video of capturing bacterial chemotaxis in action!🦠💨Shows something important—bacteria are strong swimmers! Despite the flow, Salmonella head straight for the nutrients. Makes sense, gut has a ton of flow! 🧪 #Microbiology #Microsky #idsky