Computing the Dynamics of Motile Bacteria from Experimental Data

The motile bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa consists of a rod shaped body and a single polar flagellum. A molecular motor connects the helical flagellar filament to the cell body and generates a toque to propel the cell through its low Reynolds number environment. To determine the torque generated by the P. aeruginosa motor, we measure the motion of individual bacteria and input their trajectories into the computational method of regularized Stokeslets (Cortez 2001). The computational method is calibrated using dynamically similar table-top experiments to ensure accurate torque values. In this presentation, we present our method and the results of our torque measurements. See the accompanying talk by Bruce Rodenborn for details of table-top experiments and the calibration method.