Modelling the aerotaxis of Shewanella oneidensis

Shewanella oneidensis (S.o.) are a species of bacteria that can adapt to a broad variety of living conditions. This includes both aerobic and anaerobic environments and renders them interesting not only for scientific purposes, but also from an industrial point of view: They can be component of microbial fuel cells or facilitate bioremediation of water. In this work, we perform molecular dynamics simulations of particles representing these bacteria to analyse their behaviour in an aerobic environment. Due to their oxygen consumption, a gradient in this concentration is established in the system, which in turn leads to the formation of a so-called aerotactic band. We study the dependence of the bacterial dynamics on different physical parameters and quantify changes the system undergoes by means of correlation functions