Swimming bacteria at work: from reduction of viscosity to rotation of gears.

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Princeton University

Measurements of the shear viscosity in suspensions of swimming Bacillus subtilis in free-standing liquid films have revealed that the viscosity can decrease by up to a factor of 7 compared to the viscosity of the same liquid without bacteria or with nonmotile bacteria. The reduction in viscosity is observed in two complementary experiments: one studying the decay of a large vortex induced by a moving probe and another measuring the viscous torque on a rotating magnetic particle immersed in the film. In addition, we describe a class of systems in which aerobic swimming bacteria moving randomly in a fluid film power submillimeter gears and primitive systems of gears decorated with asymmetric teeth. The directional rotation is observed only in the regime of collective bacterial swimming and the gears’ angular velocities depend on and can be controlled by the amount of oxygen available to the bacteria.