Foraging Signals Promote Swarming in Starving Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Divakar Badal, Abhijith Vimal Jayarani, Ameen M. Kollaran, Deep Prakash, P Monisha, Varsha Singh
Abstract
P. aeruginosa, a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen, can adapt to diverse ecological niches and exhibits several forms of social behavior. Swarming (flagellum-driven collective motility) is a collective behavior of P. aeruginosa exclusively over semisolid surfaces. However, the ecological motivations for swarming are not known. Here, we demonstrate the importance of a specific environmental cue, ethanol, produced by many microbes, in inducing swarming in the P. aeruginosa population during starvation. We show that ethanol is a signal for swarming in P. aeruginosa. Our study provides a framework to understand swarming as a chemotactic response of bacterium to a food source via a foraging signal, ethanol.