Twitching motility

Attachment of bacteria. At low ionic strength of the medium — as in many freshwaters — bacteria-surface interactions are controlled by the effects of van der Waals attraction and electrostatic repulsion. At high ionic strength — as in seawater — steric interactions between the outer cell surface macromolecules and the substratum gain in importance (van Loosdrecht et al., 1989 Rijnaarts etal., 1999). Additionally, flagellar and twitching motility of bacteria was found to be essential in the process of attachment by bacteria onto surfaces (Pratt and Kolter, 1998 O Toole and Kolter, 1998). It seems that extracellular polysaccharides of bacteria are not involved in the adhesion process itself. However, bacterial extracellular polysaccharides are necessary for the development of a biofilm and for the formation of microcolonies (Allison and Sutherland, 1987 Hoyle et al., 1993). 

O Toole, G. A., and R. Kolter. 1998. Flagellar and twitching motility are necessary for Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm development. Molecular Microbiology 30 295-304. 

M. H. Rashid and A. Komberg (2000). Inorganic polyphosphate is needed for swimming, swarming, and twitching motilities of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 97, 4885-4890. 

Key words Halorhodospira halophila, Ectothiorhodospira, Elalobacterium salinarum, Rhodobacter sphaeroides, Synechocystis, Rhodocista centenaria, Rhodospirillum centenum. Swimming motility, Swarming motility. Twitching motility. Photoactive yellow protein, Sensory rhodopsin, Phytochrome, BLUF, Redox sensing... 

D., Kennedy, D., Sargent, J. L., Bertrand, J. J., et al. (2004) Characterization of a complex chemosensory signal transduction system which controls twitching motility in Pseudomonas aer-uginosa. Mol. Microbiol. 52, 873-893. 

Li, Y., Hao, G., Galvani, C. D., Meng, Y., De La Puente, L., Hoch, H. C., et al. (2007) Type I and type IV pili of Xylella fastidiosa affect twitching motility, biofilm formation and cell-cell aggregation. Microbiology 153, 719-726. 

Henrichsen, J., and Blom, J. (1975) Correlation between twitching motility and possession of polar fimbriae in Acinetobacter calcoaceticus. Acta Pathol. Microbiol. Scand. [B]83, 103-115. 

Merz, A.J., So, M. and Sheetz, M.P. (2000). Pilus retraction powers bacterial twitching motility. Nature 407, 98-102. 

Heinrichsen, J. Twitching Motility , Annual Reviews of Microbiology (1983), 37, 81-93... 

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