Is E. coli good at chemotaxis?

Bacteria seem masters of chemotaxis, yet recent work suggests otherwise. Henry Mattingly and colleagues (Nature Physics, 2026) argue that Escherichia coli uses only a small fraction of the sensory information available at its surface, challenging the long-held view that bacterial chemotaxis operates near physical sensing limits. This article offers a brief conceptual discussion of their findings, placing them in the context of classical chemotaxis models, robustness to noise, and broader perspectives drawn from physics, biology, and Greek mythology.

No reviews yet.

No comments yet.