Swimming Patterns in Zoospores
Last modified: 2014-03-28
Abstract
Oomycetes are a group of pathogens that cause many destructive diseases in animals and plants. One species in particular, Phytophthora Infestans, is perhaps the most well known and is responsible for the potato late blight disease. It was the cause of the infamous Irish potato famine in the 1880s and remains a significant global problem with associated costs estimated at $3 billion annually. Key to the success of this pathogen is the dispersal of free-swimming cells called zoospores. A poorly understood aspect of zoospore behaviour is auto-aggregation - the spontaneous formation of large-scale patterns in cell density. Current competing hypotheses suggest that these patterns are formed by one of two distinct mechanisms: chemotaxis and bioconvection. In this talk we present mathematical and experimental results that together provide strong evidence that auto-aggregation can only result from a combination of these mechanisms, each having a distinct, time-separated role.
Keywords
zoospores; bioconvection; chemotaxis