Movement of an organism or entity in response to a chemical stimulus
Capillary tube assay for chemotaxis. Motile prokaryotes sense chemicals in their environment and change their motility accordingly. Absent chemicals, movement is completely random. When an attractant or repellent is present, runs become longer and tumbles become less frequent. The result is net movement towards or away from the chemical (i.e., up or down the chemical gradient). The net movement can be seen in the beaker, where the bacteria accumulate around the origin of the attractant, and away from the origin of the repellent.
Chemotaxis (from chemo- + taxis) is the movement of an organism or entity in response to a chemical stimulus.[1] Somatic cells, bacteria, and other single-cell or multicellular organisms direct their movements according to certain chemicals in their environment. This is important for bacteria to find food (e.g., glucose) by swimming toward the highest concentration of food molecules, or to flee from poisons (e.g., phenol). In multicellular organisms, chemotaxis is critical to early development (e.g., movement of sperm towards the egg during fertilization) and development (e.g., migration of neurons or lymphocytes) as well as in normal function and health (e.g., migration of leukocytes during injury or infection).[2] In addition, it has been recognized that mechanisms that allow chemotaxis in animals can be subverted during cancer metastasis.[3] The aberrant chemotaxis of leukocytes and lymphocytes also contribute to inflammatory diseases such as atherosclerosis, asthma, and arthritis.[4][5][6][7] Sub-cellular components, such as the polarity patch generated by mating yeast, may also display chemotactic behavior.[8]
Positive chemotaxis occurs if the movement is toward a higher concentration of the chemical in question; negative chemotaxis if the movement is in the opposite direction. Chemically prompted kinesis (randomly directed or nondirectional) can be called chemokinesis.
^Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Chemotaxis" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 77.
^de Oliveira S, Rosowski EE, Huttenlocher A (May 2016). "Neutrophil migration in infection and wound repair: going forward in reverse". Nature Reviews. Immunology. 16 (6): 378–91. doi:10.1038/nri.2016.49. PMC 5367630. PMID 27231052.
^Stuelten CH, Parent CA, Montell DJ (May 2018). "Cell motility in cancer invasion and metastasis: insights from simple model organisms". Nature Reviews. Cancer. 18 (5): 296–312. doi:10.1038/nrc.2018.15. PMC 6790333. PMID 29546880.
^Li J, Ley K (January 2015). "Lymphocyte migration into atherosclerotic plaque". Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 35 (1): 40–9. doi:10.1161/ATVBAHA.114.303227. PMC 4429868. PMID 25301842.
^Gelfand EW (October 2017). "Importance of the leukotriene B4-BLT1 and LTB4-BLT2 pathways in asthma". Seminars in Immunology. 33: 44–51. doi:10.1016/j.smim.2017.08.005. PMC 5679233. PMID 29042028.
^Planagumà A, Domènech T, Pont M, Calama E, García-González V, López R, Aulí M, López M, Fonquerna S, Ramos I, de Alba J, Nueda A, Prats N, Segarra V, Miralpeix M, Lehner MD (October 2015). "Combined anti CXC receptors 1 and 2 therapy is a promising anti-inflammatory treatment for respiratory diseases by reducing neutrophil migration and activation". Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics. 34: 37–45. doi:10.1016/j.pupt.2015.08.002. PMID 26271598.
^Rana AK, Li Y, Dang Q, Yang F (December 2018). "Monocytes in rheumatoid arthritis: Circulating precursors of macrophages and osteoclasts and, their heterogeneity and plasticity role in RA pathogenesis". International Immunopharmacology. 65: 348–359. doi:10.1016/j.intimp.2018.10.016. PMID 30366278. S2CID 53116963.
^Ghose, Debraj; Jacobs, Katherine; Ramirez, Samuel; Elston, Timothy; Lew, Daniel (1 June 2021). "Chemotactic movement of a polarity site enables yeast cells to find their mates". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 118 (22): e2025445118. Bibcode:2021PNAS..11825445G. doi:10.1073/pnas.2025445118. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 8179161. PMID 34050026.
recognized that mechanisms that allow chemotaxis in animals can be subverted during cancer metastasis. The aberrant chemotaxis of leukocytes and lymphocytes also...
guidance in the form of sperm chemotaxis has been established in a large variety of species Although sperm chemotaxis is prevalent throughout the Metazoa...
fMLP, leukotriene B4, and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in a process called chemotaxis. They are the predominant cells in pus, accounting for its whitish/yellowish...
Chemotaxis assays are experimental tools for evaluation of chemotactic ability of prokaryotic or eukaryotic cells. A wide variety of techniques have been...
invertebrates the guidance is done by chemotaxis. In the case of mammals, it appears to be done by chemotaxis, thermotaxis and rheotaxis. Since the discovery...
highlights the need to understand how chemotaxis functions in the context of marine microenvironments. Chemotaxis hinges on the stochastic binding/unbinding...
creates a cascade of chemical reactions that promotes opsonization, chemotaxis, and agglutination, and produces the MAC. The kinin system generates proteins...
bourgeonal imitated the role of progesterone in stimulating sperm to swim (chemotaxis), a process unrelated to odor reception. All parts of the plant are potentially...
damage or infection; in a process called chemotaxis. A number of variables are essential for the successful chemotaxis of neutrophils, including the increased...
turning. Chemotaxis is a response elicited by chemicals: that is, a response to a chemical concentration gradient. For example, chemotaxis in response...
neutrophils migrate toward the site of inflammation in a process called chemotaxis, and are usually the first cells to arrive at the scene of infection....
cytokines, which trigger neutrophils to seek the site of infection by chemotaxis. There, the neutrophils release granules, which destroy the bacteria....
There are three steps to fertilisation that ensure species-specificity: Chemotaxis Sperm activation/acrosomal reaction Sperm/egg adhesion Consideration as...
example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis. Interaction between organisms. the processes by which an organism has...
Bacterial chemotaxis plays an important role in establishing this symbiotic relationship. Azorhizobium caulinodans is a genome and it contains chemotaxis gene...
cloaca or vagina gets inseminated, and then the spermatozoa move through chemotaxis to the ovum inside an oviduct. In assisted reproductive technology, normozoospermia...
motion of the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism), and chemotaxis. Reproduction: the ability to produce new individual organisms, either...
behaviors, and their rapid growth. It is used to study cell differentiation, chemotaxis, and apoptosis, which are all normal cellular processes. It is also used...
feature of the chemotaxis receptors and ligands provides the possibility to select chemotactic responder cells with a simple chemotaxis assay. By chemotactic...
is slightly different from Chemotaxis, the major difference being that chemotropism is related to growth, while chemotaxis is related to locomotion. A...
initial sample deposition. Another setup commonly used for measuring chemotaxis and chemokinesis utilizes the under-agarose cell migration assay, whereby...
strain R1, as a result of adsorption of the substrate to the clays. Chemotaxis, or the directed movement of motile organisms towards or away from chemicals...
recruitment of inflammatory cells. It has been shown to inhibit eosinophil chemotaxis and LTB4 release. At a dosage of 20 mg, Boone et al. found that it inhibited...
hormone terminology, cytokines may be autocrine or paracrine in nature, and chemotaxis, chemokinesis and endocrine as a pyrogen. Essentially, cytokines are not...
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