Reentrant Efficiency of Phototaxis in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Cells.

ABSTRACT: Phototaxis is one of the most fundamental stimulus-response behaviors in biology wherein motile microorganisms sense light gradients to swim toward the light source. Apart from single-cell survival and growth, it plays a major role at the global scale of aquatic ecosystems and bioreactors. We study phototaxis of single-celled algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as a function of cell number density and light stimulus using high spatiotemporal video microscopy. Surprisingly, the phototactic efficiency has a minimum at a well-defined number density, for a given light gradient, above which the phototaxis behavior of a collection of cells can even exceed the performance obtainable from single isolated cells. We show that the origin of enhancement of performance above the critical concentration lies

SUBMITTER: Choudhary SK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6817637 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature