Metabolic feedback during bacterial fermentation is a motility brake

Abstract

We study an unexpectedly fast decay of motility in dense suspensions of Escherichia coli bacteria supplied with excess glucose under anaerobic conditions. The decrease in swimming speed occurs on a timescale inversely proportional to the cell concentration, and is associated with the secretion of organic acids by the bacteria. We show that the decay is driven by the progressive accumulation of non-ionised organic acids in the medium, and develop a chemical kinetic model that successfully predicts the swimming speed variations over a range of conditions in the presence of these acids. We further measure the internal pH of E. coli cells exposed to organic acids, and find that the speed decay coincides with sharp declines in internal pH and metabolic rate. Our findings identify an additional layer of motility control that can arise in complex environments even when motility genes are expressed and energy sources are abundant. This mechanism is likely relevant for understanding bacterial motility in habitats such as the human gut, where high densities of bacteria and organic acids are common.