Publications associées à Pseudomonas aeruginosa orchestrates twitching motility by sequential control of type IV pili movements

Interactions between pili affect the outcome of bacterial competition driven by the type VI secretion system

Melanie Blokesch, Anne-Florence Raphaëlle Bitbol, Simon Bernhard Otto, Richard Marie Servajean, Alexandre Lemopoulos

The bacterial type VI secretion system (T6SS) is a widespread, kin-discriminatory weapon capable of shaping microbial communities. Due to the system’s dependency on contact, cellular interactions can lead to either competition or kin protection. Cell-to-ce ...

2024

Two antagonistic response regulators control Pseudomonas aeruginosa polarization during mechanotaxis

Lorenzo Anton-Louis Talà, Alexandre Louis André Persat, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Marco Julian Kühn, Joanne Netter Engel

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa adapts to solid surfaces to enhance virulence and infect its host. Type IV pili (T4P), long and thin filaments that power surface-specific twitching motility, allow single cells to sense surfaces and contro ...

WILEY2023

Material Substrate Physical Properties Control Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilm Architecture

Alice Cont, Alexandre Louis André Persat

The biofilm lifestyle is the most widespread survival strategy in the bacterial world. Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms cause chronic infections and are highly recalcitrant to antimicrobials. The genetic requirements allowing P. aeruginosa to grow into biof ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Characterization of Pseudomonas aeruginosa mechanosensing through label-free imaging of type IV pili

Lorenzo Anton-Louis Talà

Bacteria are ubiquitously found in all sorts of environment. They're found in the ocean, soil, or even in our guts or on our skin. Independently of their niche, they can transition from a planktonic state were they freely swim in an aqueous environment to ...

EPFL2022

High light quantity suppresses locomotion in symbiotic Aiptasia

Anders Meibom, Nils Rädecker, Claudia Isabella Pogoreutz

Many cnidarians engage in endosymbioses with microalgae of the family Symbiodiniaceae. In this association, the fitness of the cnidarian host is closely linked to the photosynthetic performance of its microalgal symbionts. Phototaxis may enable semi-sessil ...

2022

Development of soft microscopic implants and acoustically-powered machines for biomedical applications

Murat Kaynak

The development of miniaturized machines that can actively cross barriers, navigate through heterogeneous materials and access remote sites can revolutionize environmental inspection and targeted therapy. Seminal work demonstrated the feasibility of follow ...

EPFL2021

Mechanotaxis directs Pseudomonas aeruginosa twitching motility

Lorenzo Anton-Louis Talà, Alexandre Louis André Persat, Xavier Jean-Yves Pierrat, Jose Negrete Jr, Marco Julian Kühn, Joanne Netter Engel

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa explores surfaces using twitching motility powered by retractile extracellu-lar filaments called type IV pili (T4P). Single cells twitch by sequen-tial T4P extension, attachment, and retraction. How single ...

National Academy of Sciences2021

Highly motile nanoscale magnetic artificial cilia

Yves Bellouard, Tanveer Ul Islam

Among the many complex bioactuators functioning at different scales, the organelle cilium represents a fundamental actuating unit in cellular biology. Producing motions at submicrometer scales, dominated by viscous forces, cilia drive a number of crucial b ...

National Academy of Sciences2021

The type IV pilus protein PilU functions as a PilT-dependent retraction ATPase

Melanie Blokesch, Candice Stoudmann, Sandrine Stutzmann, David William Adams, Jorge André Matias Pereira

Type IV pili are dynamic cell surface appendages found throughout the bacteria. The ability of these structures to undergo repetitive cycles of extension and retraction underpins their crucial roles in adhesion, motility and natural competence for transfor ...

2019

Adaptive locomotion of artificial microswimmers

Mahmut Selman Sakar, Fazil Emre Uslu

Bacteria can exploit mechanics to display remarkable plasticity in response to locally changing physical and chemical conditions. Compliant structures play a notable role in their taxis behavior, specifically for navigation inside complex and structured en ...

2019

DNA-uptake pili of Vibrio cholerae are required for chitin colonization and capable of kin recognition via sequence-specific self-interaction

Melanie Blokesch, Candice Stoudmann, Sandrine Stutzmann, David William Adams

How bacteria colonize surfaces and how they distinguish the individuals around them are fundamental biological questions. Type IV pili are a widespread and multipurpose class of cell surface polymers. Here we directly visualize the DNA-uptake pilus of Vibr ...

2019

Swimming with a cage: low-Reynolds-number locomotion inside a droplet

François Gallaire, Lailai Zhu

Inspired by recent experiments using synthetic microswimmers to manipulate droplets, we investigate the low-Reynolds-number locomotion of a model swimmer (a spherical squirmer) encapsulated inside a droplet of a comparable size in another viscous fluid. Me ...

Royal Society of Chemistry2017

Soft micromachines with programmable motility and morphology

Mahmut Selman Sakar

Nature provides a wide range of inspiration for building mobile micromachines that can navigate through confined heterogenous environments and perform minimally invasive environmental and biomedical operations. For example, microstructures fabricated in th ...

Nature Research2016

A wearable system for monitoring the velocity variability in open water swimming and triathlon

Kamiar Aminian, Farzin Dadashi, Grégoire Millet

Pacing tactics in the swimming bout notably influences the overall triathlon performance. Besides, the swimming velocity affects the energy expenditure (EE). Based on our previous works to estimate the swimming velocity, here we propose a system to measure ...

2013

Spinal and Supraspinal Control of the Direction of Stepping during Locomotion

Pavel Musienko

Most bipeds and quadrupeds, in addition to forward walking, are also capable of backward and sideward walking. The direction of walking is determined by the direction of stepping movements of individual limbs in relation to the front-to-rear body axis. Our ...

Society for Neuroscience2012

Controlling swimming and crawling in a fish robot using a central pattern generator

Auke Ijspeert, Alessandro Crespi, Daisy Lachat, Ariane Pasquier

Online trajectory generation for robots with multiple degrees of freedom is still a difficult and unsolved problem, in particular for non-steady state locomotion, that is, when the robot has to move in a complex environment with continuous variations of th ...

2008

Concept, modeling and experimental characterization of the modulated friction inertial drive (MFID) locomotion principle : application to mobile microrobots

Walter Driesen

A mobile microrobot is defined as a robot with a size ranging from 1 in3 down to 100 µm3 and a motion range of at least several times the robot's length. Mobile microrobots have a great potential for a wide range of mid-term and long-term applications such ...

EPFL2008

Dynamics of actin and myosin II during cell polarization and directional locomotion

Sophie Bohnet

Crawling cell motility is characteristic of most animal cells and is involved in many important biological processes such as embryogenesis, immune response, and wound healing. It involves several steps: protrusion (dynamic surface extension) at the front o ...

EPFL2006

Tracking retrograde flow in keratocytes: news from the front

Jean-Jacques Meister, Sophie Bohnet, Alexander Verkhovskiy

Actin assembly at the leading edge of the cell is believed to drive protrusion, whereas membrane resistance and contractile forces result in retrograde flow of the assembled actin network away from the edge. Thus, cell motion and shape changes are expected ...

American Society for Cell Biology2005