Viscoelastic control of spatiotemporal order in bacterial active matter

Active matter consists of units that generate mechanical work by consuming energy 1 . Examples include living systems (such as assemblies of bacteria 2 – 5 and biological tissues 6 , 7 ), biopolymers driven by molecular motors 8 – 11 and suspensions of synthetic self-propelled particles 12 – 14 . A central goal is to understand and control the self-organization of active assemblies in space and time. Most active systems exhibit either spatial order mediated by interactions that coordinate the spatial structure and the motion of active agents 12 , 14 , 15 or the temporal synchronization of individual oscillatory dynamics 2 . The simultaneous control of spatial and temporal organization is more challenging and generally requires complex interactions, such as reaction–diffusion hierarchies 16 or genetically engineered cellular circuits 2 . Here we report a simple technique to simultaneously control the spatial and temporal self-organization of bacterial active matter. We confine dense active suspensions of Escherichia coli cells and manipulate a single macroscopic parameter—namely, the viscoelasticity of the suspending fluid— through the addition of purified genomic DNA. This reveals self-driven spatial and temporal organization in the form of a millimetre-scale rotating vortex with periodically oscillating global chirality of tunable frequency, reminiscent of a torsional pendulum. By combining experiments with an active-matter model, we explain this behaviour in terms of the interplay between active forcing and viscoelastic stress relaxation. Our findings provide insight into the influence of bacterial motile behaviour in complex fluids, which may be of interest in health- and ecology-related research, and demonstrate experimentally that rheological properties can be harnessed to control active-matter flows 17 , 18 . We envisage that our millimetre-scale, tunable, self-oscillating bacterial vortex may be coupled to actuation systems to act a ‘clock generator’ capable of providing timing signals for rhythmic locomotion of soft robots and for programmed microfluidic pumping 19 , for example, by triggering the action of a shift register in soft-robotic logic devices 20 . Introducing viscoelasticity by addition of DNA into the fluid surrounding a suspension of Escherichia coli produces a giant oscillating vortex with a period controllable through the DNA concentration.