Overview
Title: A tale of two motilities: adaptive locomotion in complex, changing environments
Abstract: I will discuss two (quite different!) adaptive locomotive modes that are able to contend with the heterogeneity and uncertainty inherent to natural environments: flagellated swimming in bacteria and walking in panarthropods. (1) Bacteria have evolved mechanisms at both the molecular and whole-cell level to facilitate motility through a wide range of complex environments. At the molecular level, we characterize mechanosensitivity in the bacterial flagellar motor (BFM), the rotary nanomachine that propels bacterial swimming. At the whole cell level, we explore how bacterial motility patterns adapt to confined, disordered environments. We discuss the features of these results that generalize across bacterial species (and those that don’t!), underscoring the importance of considering flagellar motility in the context of a bacterium’s environment and evolutionary history. (2) Panarthropods are a diverse clade containing insects, crustaceans, myriapods, and tardigrades. We show that inter-limb coordination patterns in freely-behaving tardigrades replicate several key features of walking in insects across a range of speeds and substrates. In light of these functional similarities, we propose a simple universal locomotor circuit capable of robust multi-legged control across body sizes, skeletal structures, and habitats.
Jasmine Nirody is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. Nirody is interested in how organisms sense and respond to mechanical cues from natural environments, which can be spatially complex and temporally dynamic. Nirody’s recent work has focused on two broad systems, flagellated swimming in bacteria and walking in panarthopods.
Learn more about Jasmine Nirody’s research
The NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology Seminar Series aims to bring together a mix of mathematicians and biologists to foster discussion and collaboration between the two fields. The seminar series will take place on Fridays from 10am – 11am at the NITMB offices in the John Hancock Center in downtown Chicago. There will be both an in-person and virtual component.