galvanotaxis

traitmech:000581 · CLASS · PROPOSED

A motile phenotype in which an organism biases its active movement in response to an electric field.

Trait evidence (2)

DOI:10.1101/sqb.1988.053.01.006
movement of a motile organism or cell in direct response to an electric current

Adler and Shi, publisher's freely accessible Excerpt, https://symposium.cshlp.org/content/53/23.short. The full paywalled paper was not accessed. The disposition requires active motility; passive electrophoretic displacement alone is insufficient.
DOI:10.1128/jb.178.4.1113-1119.1996
motile Escherichia coli K-12 placed in an electric field swims toward the anode

Shi, Stocker and Adler, primary abstract (PMID:8576046), verified through Europe PMC. Rough K-12 and smooth Salmonella differ in direction; surface composition and capsules qualify the response. Only the abstract was accessed, not the full paper.

Flagellar motility in electric-field-biased migration

Flagellin supports the motility apparatus used for active galvanotaxis.

MECHANISTIC · The flagellar-motility branch supported in Salmonella 14028S-background cells, not a complete electrical sensing or orientation mechanism. The fliC/fljB double mutant establishes dependence on the flagellar apparatus, not individual FliC necessity or flagellin sufficiency. Host CFTR is outside this microbial graph.

Edge evidence

electric field modulates electric-field-biased active migration RO:0002211
An applied electric field biases active migration direction.
- DOI:10.1038/s41564-024-01778-8 robustly biased migration of all cells Results and Figure 5c-e compare no-field and 2 V/cm conditions. DH5alpha K-12-background cells migrated toward the anode and IR715-background cells toward the cathode. This edge does not prescribe one direction for every microbe.
flagellin contributes to flagellar motility RO:0002326
Flagellin supplies the filament component of the motility apparatus.
- https://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/entry/InterPro/IPR001492/ Flagellin is the subunit protein that polymerises to form the flagella InterPro IPR001492 family description, verified through https://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/api/entry/interpro/IPR001492/ on 2026-10-03. This is a family, not merely an N- or C-terminal domain. Filament assembly and the motor are also required; flagellin alone is not sufficient for movement.
flagellar motility contributes to electric-field-biased active migration RO:0002326
Flagellar motility enables active electrical-field-guided migration.
- DOI:10.1038/s41564-024-01778-8 flagella are indeed essential for electrical field-guided galvanotaxis Results, flagellar-mutant experiment: SW473 cells were mostly non-motile and unresponsive. This establishes a motility requirement, not a specific electrical sensor. Fixed-cell controls distinguish passive drift from live-cell swimming.
electric-field-biased active migration confers galvanotaxis METPO:2007700
Electric-field-guided active movement realizes the galvanotaxis phenotype.
- DOI:10.1101/sqb.1988.053.01.006 migration is toward the cathode or the anode Publisher's free Excerpt defines galvanotaxis and allows either pole. Direction depends on organism and context, rather than being a universal part of this trait definition.

Protein and taxon examples

Graph node Protein Taxon UniProt status Role and evidence

flagellin

Graph node	Protein	Taxon	UniProt status	Role and evidence
flagellin	`UniProtKB:A0A0F6B2U2` Flagellin (fliC)	Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium str. 14028S `NCBITaxon:588858`	`UNREVIEWED` retrieved 2026-10-03 · entry v42 · sequence v1	FliC is one of the two alternative flagellins removed together in SW473; individual FliC necessity was not established. `DOI:10.1038/s41564-024-01778-8` Most of these mutants were non-motile Results, flagellar-mutant paragraph and Supplementary Table 1: SW473 is an IR715 fliC/fljB double mutant. The exact 14028S FliC identity, taxon and versions were resolved at https://www.ebi.ac.uk/proteins/api/proteins/A0A0F6B2U2; https://rest.uniprot.org/proteomes/UP000002695.json confirms reference-proteome membership. UniProtKB REST protein requests failed during retrieval; the EBI Proteins API supplied the metadata. This accession anchors the strain background, not an experimentally sequenced SW473 protein.

UniProtKB:A0A0F6B2U2
Flagellin (fliC)

Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium str. 14028S
NCBITaxon:588858

UNREVIEWED
retrieved 2026-10-03 · entry v42 · sequence v1

FliC is one of the two alternative flagellins removed together in SW473; individual FliC necessity was not established.

DOI:10.1038/s41564-024-01778-8 Most of these mutants were non-motile Results, flagellar-mutant paragraph and Supplementary Table 1: SW473 is an IR715 fliC/fljB double mutant. The exact 14028S FliC identity, taxon and versions were resolved at https://www.ebi.ac.uk/proteins/api/proteins/A0A0F6B2U2; https://rest.uniprot.org/proteomes/UP000002695.json confirms reference-proteome membership. UniProtKB REST protein requests failed during retrieval; the EBI Proteins API supplied the metadata. This accession anchors the strain background, not an experimentally sequenced SW473 protein.

Provenance

Identifier source: TraitMech local identifier
Definition source: DOI:10.1101/sqb.1988.053.01.006

Parent traits (1)

motile METPO:1000702

kg-microbe context

No kg-microbe node embedding matched this record in the 2026-04-25 deepwalk.

Canonical examples (2)

Organisms cited as exemplars of this trait. Taxon ids are NCBITaxon and link out to the NCBI record.

Escherichia coli K-12 NCBITaxon:83333 DOI:10.1128/jb.178.4.1113-1119.1996 The primary abstract reports anode-directed swimming of motile rough K-12 cells. This is not a claim about every E. coli strain or an invariant direction across surface compositions.
Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium str. 14028S NCBITaxon:588858 DOI:10.1038/s41564-024-01778-8 Figure 5 and Supplementary Table 1: Green ST is IR715, a nalidixic-acid-resistant 14028S derivative, carrying pGFT/RalFc. These fluorescent cells migrated toward the cathode at 2 V/cm in vitro. Do not substitute the SW473 flagellar mutant or the separate cheB mutant for this behavioral example.

Discussions and Knowledge Gaps (2)

Open questions attached to this trait. Seeded by just knowledge-gap-scan and curated; see the corpus-wide index.

Resolve electrical orientation mechanisms without equating active motility with passive drift.

KNOWLEDGE GAP OPEN galvanotaxis-orientation-and-mapping-boundaries · raised by codex · 2026-10-03

Not yet attached to a section of this record — a curator sets attaches_to (e.g. causal_graphs#some_edge) so the gap shows beside the mechanism it concerns.

DOI:10.1128/jb.178.4.1113-1119.1996 proposes differential electrophoretic mobility of the body and flagellar filaments as an orientation model. DOI:10.1038/s41564-024-01778-8 observes flagellar redistribution and a largely non-motile double mutant; it does not establish a universal receptor circuit or separate the individual flagellin contributions. A cheB mutant retains the electrical response. The source's weakly biased B. subtilis assay is not a robust canonical example. Physical orientation can guide powered locomotion, but fixed-cell drift alone is not this phenotype. QuickGO searches for galvanotaxis and electrotaxis found no exact term on 2026-10-03; MeSH Taxis Response is broader and excluded from xrefs. GO:0071973 grounds only the flagellar process.

Reconcile directedness signs before importing numerical source-data values.

CURATION TODO OPEN galvanotaxis-source-data-coordinate-convention · raised by codex · 2026-10-03

Not yet attached to a section of this record — a curator sets attaches_to (e.g. causal_graphs#some_edge) so the gap shows beside the mechanism it concerns.

Sun et al., Figure 5d and Results report negative directedness for E. coli and positive for Salmonella. The source workbook's Fig. 5d,e sheet labels Red to anode and Green to cathode but contains opposite-signed cosine values. Direction labels agree with Figure 5c and the 1996 primary abstract; the coordinate conventions need reconciliation. No numerical directedness values are imported and no correction is inferred. Source: https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41564-024-01778-8/MediaObjects/41564_2024_1778_MOESM10_ESM.xlsx

Curation history

2026-10-03T23:20:08Z · MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID · codex
Added galvanotaxis with three primary DOI sources, an InterPro family source, exact snippets, two strain-qualified examples and a flagellar-motility graph. Verified NCBI taxa, IPR001492, GO:0071973, the 14028S FliC accession and its reference proteome. Ignored-and-hidden searches found no exact trait or METPO class; reserved METPO:1053500 in proposal v458. Kept electrical orientation and source-data sign conventions as open questions.