Evidence of Chemical Wave-Electric Field Interaction in Bacterial Cells

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.