Nature: A new study on how bacteria swim could help prevent the spread of disease

Science fiction writers have been writing about the idea of ​​using tiny swimmers to perform surgery or deliver medicine to humans for years

Their findings could help scientists develop new treatments for diseases caused by bacteria and design bacteria-based systems for delivering drugs to the body

The University of Minnesota has a long history of studying swimming in liquids other than water

Nearly 20 years later, a multidisciplinary team at the University of Minnesota has revisited the question, except that swimmers are now microbes, not college athletes

Scientists have been studying "bacterial swimming" in depth since the 1960s, as it is well known in the research community

In the new study, however, the University of Michigan team was the first to investigate how bacteria move in a solution of small solid particles, rather than chains of molecules

Researchers at the University of Michigan have a possible answer

"Bacterial swimming has been of interest since the invention of the microscope in the 17th century, but until now, understanding of bacteria has mostly been limited to simple liquids like water," said Shashank Kamdar, first author of the paper and a graduate student in chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota.

Understanding how bacteria move through complex, sticky environments -- the human body is one of them -- could help scientists design treatments for disease and even use bacteria as containers for delivering drugs to humans

"Several mechanisms have been used to explain this phenomenon for decades, but with this study, we provide a unified understanding of what happens when bacteria swim through complex solutions

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The colloidal nature of complex fluids enhances bacterial motility