Bacterial Motility

A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Microbiology and Immunology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 799

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
Interests: Helicobacter pylori; bacteria motility; live-cell microscopic imaging and tracking; hydrodynamic modeling of bacteria swimming; chemotaxis; gastric mucus; mucin; gelation; rheology; microrheology; microfluidics
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue delves into the fascinating world of bacterial motility, exploring the diverse mechanisms and adaptations that enable these microorganisms to navigate their environments. Original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

Fundamental Mechanisms of Bacterial Movement: Studies examining the structure and function of flagella, pili, and other motility structures. Mechanisms of single-bacterium motility and collective motions are both of interest. We would like to highlight novel experimental and theoretical modeling studies of different motility mechanisms to further develop this topic.

Adaptive Strategies in Bacterial Locomotion: Studies of how bacteria adapt their movement patterns in response to their host, the environmental conditions of the medium, and external stimuli, such as chemotaxis, which allows them to move towards a favorable niche or exhibit collective swarming motions under certain conditions.

Ecological and Pathological Implications: Studies that explore the ecological significance of bacterial movement in various habitats, as well as the role of motility in bacterial pathogenesis and the implications for infectious diseases.

Evolutionary Perspectives: Studies that provide insight into the evolutionary aspects of bacterial motility, examining how these mechanisms have developed and diversified across different bacterial species.

Technological and Biomedical Applications: This Special Issue also plans to highlight the innovative applications of bacterial movement in biotechnology, such as the use of bacteria for targeted drug delivery and environmental remediation. We also welcome work on designing artificial swimmers inspired by bacterial motility mechanisms.

We look forward to receiving insightful contributions to generate a comprehensive issue on bacterial motility and further dialogue among the researchers of this diverse multidisciplinary community.

Prof. Dr. Rama Bansil
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • bacterial movement
  • bacterial motility
  • technological and biomedical applications
  • bacteria motors
  • chemotaxis
  • swarming motility
  • hydrodynamics of bacteria swimming mechanisms
  • biomimetic swimmers

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

15 pages, 4037 KiB  
Article
Computational Analysis of Morphological Changes in Lactiplantibacillus plantarum Under Acidic Stress
by Athira Venugopal, Doron Steinberg, Ora Moyal, Shira Yonassi, Noga Glaicher, Eliraz Gitelman, Moshe Shemesh and Moshe Amitay
Microorganisms 2025, 13(3), 647; https://doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms13030647 - 12 Mar 2025
Viewed by 445
Abstract
Shape and size often define the characteristics of individual microorganisms. Hence, characterizing cell morphology using computational image analysis can aid in the accurate, quick, unbiased, and reliable identification of bacterial morphology. Modifications in the cell morphology of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum were determined in response [...] Read more.
Shape and size often define the characteristics of individual microorganisms. Hence, characterizing cell morphology using computational image analysis can aid in the accurate, quick, unbiased, and reliable identification of bacterial morphology. Modifications in the cell morphology of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum were determined in response to acidic stress, during the growth stage of the cells at a pH 3.5 compared to a pH of 6.5. Consequently, we developed a computational method to sort, detect, analyze, and measure bacterial size in a single-species culture. We applied a deep learning methodology composed of object detection followed by image classification to measure bacterial cell dimensions. The results of our computational analysis showed a significant change in cell morphology in response to alterations of the environmental pH. Specifically, we found that the bacteria existed as a long unseparated cell, with a dramatic increase in length of 41% at a low pH compared to the control. Bacterial width was not altered in the low pH compared to the control. Those changes could be attributed to modifications in membrane properties, such as increased cell membrane fluidity in acidic pH. The integration of deep learning and object detection techniques, with microbial microscopic imaging, is an advanced methodology for studying cellular structures that can be projected for use in other bacterial species or cells. These trained models and scripts can be applied to other microbes and cells. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bacterial Motility)
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