Added one co-first author paper and one co-last author preprint!”

Finally our paper on the phototactic motility of the rod-shaped cyanobacterial cells was out in eLife! This exciting achievement would be impossible without the excellent collaborators, especially the superb microscopist Dr. Daisuke Nakane.

Briefly, we could dissect the contribution of each light color controlling the light-oriented cellular movement of Thermosynechococcus cyanobacterium. We found that light color information is transduced to the second messenger molecule c-di-GMP to govern the direction of the phototactic movement. Furthermore, we had a detailed look at the cell biological mechanisms of the phototaxis. We found that Thermosynechococcus elicits the “within-a-pole” polarity regulation, which is quite distinct compared to other bacterial cells with the “pole-to-pole” polarity control. I’m really looking forward to tackling several interesting open questions, including how c-di-GMP affects a cell, how a cell interprets the light direction, and how a cell community is coordinated with individual motility.