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A Minimal Model of Metabolism-Based Chemotaxis
Figure 9
Experiment 3: Inhibition of a metabolic pathway inhibits chemotaxis only to the relevant resources.
Placed in an environment with two sets of metabolizable resources (
located in the lower-right and 
located in the upper-right), the simulated bacteria move from an initial, even-distribution to the areas higher in concentration of either resource-pair. The insertion of 
(a chemical that inhibits the metabolism of 
) causes the simulated bacteria to cease chemotaxis towards the no-longer metabolizable resources without influencing chemotaxis to the other attractants. Histogram A illustrates average distance to the non-inhibited (
) source. Histogram B shows the distance from the inhibited source (
). As before, data is taken from 10 trials of 100 bacteria each. Plot C illustrates the spatial distribution of simulated bacteria in a typical trial.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1001004.g009