PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Moore, Jeremy Philippe
AU  - Kamino, Keita
AU  - Kottou, Rafaela
AU  - Shimizu, Thomas
AU  - Emonet, Thierry
TI  - Signal Integration and Adaptive Sensory Diversity Tuning in <em>Escherichia coli</em> Chemotaxis
AID  - 10.1101/2023.02.08.527720
DP  - 2024 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2023.02.08.527720
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/06/24/2023.02.08.527720.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/06/24/2023.02.08.527720.full
AB  - In uncertain environments, phenotypic diversity can be advantageous for survival. However, as the environmental uncertainty decreases, the relative advantage of having diverse phenotypes decreases. Here, we show how populations of E. coli integrate multiple chemical signals to adjust sensory diversity in response to changes in the prevalence of each ligand in the environment. Measuring kinase activity in single cells, we quantified the sensitivity distribution to various chemoattractants in different mixtures of background stimuli. We found that when ligands bind uncompetitively, the population tunes sensory diversity to each signal independently, decreasing diversity when the signal ambient concentration increases. However, amongst competitive ligands the population can only decrease sensory diversity one ligand at a time. Mathematical modeling suggests that sensory diversity tuning benefits E. coli populations by modulating how many cells are committed to tracking each signal proportionally as their prevalence changes.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.