MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF CELL TRANSPORT PHENOMENA: BACTERIAL CHEMOTAXIS IN THE CAPILLARY ASSAY

Abstract

Equations representing a phenomenological model for chemotactic movement of bacteria in the standard capillary assay are analyzed using a similarity transform. The form of the transformed equations leads to a regrouping of system parameters that effectively reduces the number of independent variables and yields a straight forward solution. This solution can be represented on a single, time-independent plot for a given combination of bacteria and chemoattractant. This plot greatly simplifies the reduction of experimental results in terms of the model parameters μ and x: the random motility coefficient and the chemotaxis coefficient.