Multiflagellarity facilitates bacterial upstream motility

Abstract

Upstream swimming drives bacterial spreading and surface colonization. Many pathogens encounter fluid flows as they infect the intestines, lungs, and urinary tract, so how bacteria use their flagella to counter these flows matters for disease and treatment. Yet how morphology and flagellar arrangement govern motility against flow remains unknown. Here, we investigate the biophysical determinants of rheotaxis by combining microfluidics, directed evolution, genetics, holography, and hydrodynamics simulations. Using upstream swimming competitions, we find that peritrichous E. coli and S. enterica rapidly outcompete monotrichous P. aeruginosa and V. cholerae, accumulating upstream at densities up to five orders of magnitude higher, even though Vibrio swims three times as fast. Motility selection experiments show that rheotaxis increases with flagellar number and length, confirmed by overexpressing the master regulator flhD/C. Three-dimensional holography and single-cell tracking reveal that multiflagellarity stabilizes surface residence and promotes the weathervane effect that reorients cells upstream, a mechanism further supported by simulations that fully resolve flagellar arrangement and fluid-structure interactions. These results establish multiflagellarity as a key facilitator of upstream navigation, governed by near-wall residence and shear-driven reorientation rather than by swimming speed.

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Cite

BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{tao2026multiflagellarity,
  title = {{Multiflagellarity facilitates bacterial upstream motility}},
  author = {Ran Tao and Nathaniel C. Esteves and Wanho Lee and Lauren Altman and Liuni Chen and David Gao and Ling Li and Yongsam Kim and Jun Zhu and Sookkyung Lim and Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.15920},
  eprint = {2609.15920},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15920},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Multiflagellarity facilitates bacterial upstream motility
AU  - Ran Tao
AU  - Nathaniel C. Esteves
AU  - Wanho Lee
AU  - Lauren Altman
AU  - Liuni Chen
AU  - David Gao
AU  - Ling Li
AU  - Yongsam Kim
AU  - Jun Zhu
AU  - Sookkyung Lim
AU  - Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/14
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.15920
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.15920
AB  - Upstream swimming drives bacterial spreading and surface colonization. Many pathogens encounter fluid flows as they infect the intestines, lungs, and urinary tract, so how bacteria use their flagella to counter these flows matters for disease and treatment. Yet how morphology and flagellar arrangement govern motility against flow remains unknown. Here, we investigate the biophysical determinants of rheotaxis by combining microfluidics, directed evolution, genetics, holography, and hydrodynamics simulations. Using upstream swimming competitions, we find that peritrichous E. coli and S. enterica rapidly outcompete monotrichous P. aeruginosa and V. cholerae, accumulating upstream at densities up to five orders of magnitude higher, even though Vibrio swims three times as fast. Motility selection experiments show that rheotaxis increases with flagellar number and length, confirmed by overexpressing the master regulator flhD/C. Three-dimensional holography and single-cell tracking reveal that multiflagellarity stabilizes surface residence and promotes the weathervane effect that reorients cells upstream, a mechanism further supported by simulations that fully resolve flagellar arrangement and fluid-structure interactions. These results establish multiflagellarity as a key facilitator of upstream navigation, governed by near-wall residence and shear-driven reorientation rather than by swimming speed.
ER  -

Abstract

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