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Swarming Motility Assays in Salmonella

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Bacterial and Archaeal Motility

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2646))

Abstract

Salmonella enterica has six subspecies, of which the subspecies enterica is the most important for human health. The dispersal and infectivity of this species are dependent upon flagella-driven motility. Two kinds of flagella-mediated movements have been described—swimming individually in bulk liquid and swarming collectively over a surface substrate. During swarming, the bacteria acquire a distinct physiology, the most significant consequence of which is acquisition of adaptive resistance to antibiotics. Described here are protocols to cultivate, verify, and study swimming and swarming motility in S. enterica, and an additional “border-crossing” assay, where cells “primed” to swarm are presented with an environmental challenge such as antibiotics to assess their propensity to handle the challenge.

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Acknowledgments

Motility research in our lab is supported by grants from NIGMS (R35 GM118085) and NIAID (R21 AI158295).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Jonathan D. Partridge & Rasika M. Harshey

Authors
  1. Jonathan D. Partridge
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  2. Rasika M. Harshey
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jonathan D. Partridge or Rasika M. Harshey .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

    Tohru Minamino

  2. Graduate School of Science, Osaka Metropolitan University, Osaka, Japan

    Makoto Miyata

  3. Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences, Osaka University, Suita, Osaka, Japan

    Keiichi Namba

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Partridge, J.D., Harshey, R.M. (2023). Swarming Motility Assays in Salmonella. In: Minamino, T., Miyata, M., Namba, K. (eds) Bacterial and Archaeal Motility. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2646. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3060-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-3060-0_13

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-3059-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-3060-0

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