Evidence of Chemical Wave-Electric Field Interaction in Bacterial Cells
- 1Academia Sinica
Abstract
Charge neutrality is widely assumed in living cells, yet this approximation breaks down in micron-scale bacteria where charge imbalance and spatial confinement are significant. Using Poisson-Nernst-Planck modeling, we show that unequal cation-anion effectiveness and bounded geometry generate extended intracellular diffuse layers and steady electric fields. We demonstrate that such fields couple directly to intracellular chemical waves, focusing on the Min-protein oscillator of Escherichia coli. Electric-field-driven transport skews the dispersion-mode structure, induces mode crossings, and selectively amplifies Turing and Hopf-Turing instabilities over intermediate length scales, constraining the permitted {omega}-k spectrum and setting optimal wavelengths and modal growth-rate velocities. Experiments in wild-type, anucleate, and antibiotic-treated cells, together with simulations of nucleoid-dependent charge density and field strength, quantitatively validate these predictions and explain observed pattern asymmetries and frequency modulations. Crucially, asymmetric wave-field coupling promotes quasi-periodicity through controlled mode competition, enhancing robustness to noise, cell-size variation, and growth. These findings identify intracellular electric fields as active regulators of biochemical patterning and suggest a general role for wave-field interactions in cellular self-organization.
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BibTeX
@misc{shen2026evidence,
title = {{Evidence of Chemical Wave-Electric Field Interaction in Bacterial Cells}},
author = {J.-P. Shen and C.-F. Chou},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.05.749092},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.05.749092v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Evidence of Chemical Wave-Electric Field Interaction in Bacterial Cells
AU - J.-P. Shen
AU - C.-F. Chou
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/05
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.05.749092
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.05.749092v1
AB - Charge neutrality is widely assumed in living cells, yet this approximation breaks down in micron-scale bacteria where charge imbalance and spatial confinement are significant. Using Poisson-Nernst-Planck modeling, we show that unequal cation-anion effectiveness and bounded geometry generate extended intracellular diffuse layers and steady electric fields. We demonstrate that such fields couple directly to intracellular chemical waves, focusing on the Min-protein oscillator of Escherichia coli. Electric-field-driven transport skews the dispersion-mode structure, induces mode crossings, and selectively amplifies Turing and Hopf-Turing instabilities over intermediate length scales, constraining the permitted {omega}-k spectrum and setting optimal wavelengths and modal growth-rate velocities. Experiments in wild-type, anucleate, and antibiotic-treated cells, together with simulations of nucleoid-dependent charge density and field strength, quantitatively validate these predictions and explain observed pattern asymmetries and frequency modulations. Crucially, asymmetric wave-field coupling promotes quasi-periodicity through controlled mode competition, enhancing robustness to noise, cell-size variation, and growth. These findings identify intracellular electric fields as active regulators of biochemical patterning and suggest a general role for wave-field interactions in cellular self-organization.
ER -