Actively swimming gold nanoparticles

Bacteria can actively move towards a nutrient source—a phenomenon known as chemotaxis—and they can move collectively in a process known as swarming. Chinese scientists have redesigned collective chemotaxis by creating artificial model nanoswimmers from chemically and biochemically modified gold nanoparticles. The model could help understand the dynamics of chemotactic motility in a bacterial swarm, concludes the study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.