Spiroplasmas, the helical wall-free prokaryotes isolated from plants and insects, are capable of translational motility in viscous media, and the speed of swimming increases with viscosity. In consequence, spiroplasmas show ‘viscotactic’ behaviour in viscosity gradients. Motility is energy-dependent and is optimal at pH 7. It has also been found that spiroplasmas are capable of chemotaxis, being attracted towards sugars and some amino acids and repelled by hydrophobic amino acids, some organic acids and heavy metals.
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Daniels et al. (1980) studied this question.
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