2022 Annual Meeting
Elucidating the Onset of Chemotaxis in Bioremediation
Water scarcity is a growing concern in the U.S. as water supply decreases, consumer demand increases, and precipitation patterns shift with climate change. Considering that groundwater provides drinking water to almost half of the U.S. population, contamination of groundwater through industrial leakages and agricultural seepages presents a large problem. Bioremediation, in which biological organisms are employed to remove contaminants, is a promising method for cleaning up groundwater contaminants. Chemotactic bacteria may be especially effective to use as they can actively sense, locate, and degrade the contaminants in situ. Furthermore, chemotaxis can augment bioremediation strategies by driving the mass migration of chemotactic bacteria to contaminant sources for more efficient biodegradation. Researchers have already explored the advantage of chemotactic bacteria over non-chemotactic bacteria, but few researchers have considered how chemotactic response and the overall efficacy of bioremediation are affected by the spatial distribution of contaminants, initial bacterial density, and other factors. Such factors may determine whether a âwaveâ of bacteria will travel to the contaminant source since they affect the steepness of the concentration gradient, which chemotactic sensing depends on. To better understand the conditions under which a chemotactic âwaveâ may form, we investigate the effect of changing bacteria properties, contaminant characteristics, and the spatial distribution of contaminant sources on bacteria distribution through both simulations and experiments. Our work provides insight into how chemotactic bacteria may contribute to bioremediation at the pore scale and thereby may lead to more effective application of chemotactic bacteria in bioremediation strategies.