The relationship between chemical structure of attractants and chemotaxis by a marine bacterium

Abstract

The chemotactic responses of a marine pseudomonad to stereoisomers and analogues of amino acids and sugars were tested. The data reveal that the bacterium is equally attracted to D. L and DL forms of the amino acids. In contrast, chemical analogues of the amino acids and glucose yielded significantly lower chemotactic responses. The threshold of bacterial detection was 10−8 M for leucine and cysteine. However, the threshold molarity of most of the analogues was higher than those of the related amino acids and sugars.