Together with Christoph Weber and Vasily Zaburdaev, we published a new preprint in which we develop a stochastic model to study the substrate motility of bacteria and bacterial aggregates. We show that a previously observed persistent motility of Neisseria gonorrhoeae cells originates from a tug-of-war mechanism without any directional memory. We also find that sliding friction has a big impact on the motility of microcolonies!

Here is the link:
Pönisch, W., Weber. C.A., Zaburdaev, V. N. How bacterial cells and colonies move on solid substrates arXiv Preprint 1–24 (2018).