Escherichia coli cells are capable of alternating be- tween two swimming behaviors: smooth swimming (which moves the cells in a slightly curved path) and tumbling (which somersaults the cells and points them in new, random directions when smooth swimming resumes). Chemotaxis by E. coli results from the ability of a cell to alter the relative time spent performing these two swimming behaviors (Berg and Brown 1972; Macnab and Koshland 1972; Larsen et al. 1974; Silverman and Simon 1974) and to make this alteration in response to concentration changes of specific chemical stimuli, as detected by several receptor proteins (Adler 1969; Parkinson and Hazelbauer 1983). The components and processes that link receptor changes to changes of swimming behavior are beginning to be understood at a molecular level (Hess et al. 1988; Oosawa et al. 1988). All of the genes required specifically for chemotaxis have probably been identified (for review, see Parkinson...
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Stewart et al. (1988) studied this question.