Definition
Chemotaxis receptor arrays are clusters of transmembrane signaling proteins that employ a high degree of cooperativity to direct bacterial motion in response to changes in the concentration of extracellular ligands. This sensing and the resulting biasing of movement toward favorable environments are known as chemotaxis.
Basic Characteristics
Bacteria need to sense and respond to changes in their environment in order to survive. In the case of external chemical stimuli, motile bacteria such as Escherichia coli sense temporal changes as they move rather than spatial gradients along their length (Eisenbach 2011). In order to respond to variations in ligand concentration at sequential time points, bacterial chemosensory systems must (a) react to changes on a sub-second timescale, (b) possess short-term memory to compare current levels to that of 1–2 s earlier, and (c) gradually...
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© 2013 European Biophysical Societies' Association (EBSA)
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Venkatesh, M.J., Subramaniam, S. (2013). Chemotaxis Receptor Arrays. In: Roberts, G.C.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Biophysics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16712-6_796
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16712-6_796
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-16711-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-16712-6
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