Data from: A 3D-printed capillary tube holder for high-throughput chemotaxis assays

Bacterial chemotaxis is an important behavior to study to understand the
spatial segregation of species in mixed communities and the assembly of
host microbiomes. This is particularly relevant in the rhizosphere, where
chemoattraction towards root exudates is an important determinant of plant
colonization. However, current methods to screen chemoeffectors are
limited in their throughput, creating a barrier to generating
comprehensive datasets describing chemotactic profiles for species of
interest. Here, we describe a novel, 3D-printed capillary tube holder
approach, which enables up to 384 simultaneous capillary tube chemotaxis
assays. We optimized and benchmarked our assay using Escherichia coli k12
and Bacillus subtilis 3610 and their known chemoattractants: serine and
aspartate. We then tested the threshold concentration of these
chemoattractants in our assay and found we could detect chemoattraction
towards concentrations spanning multiple orders of magnitude. In this
paper, we describe our novel high-throughput chemotaxis assay in detail
and provide the necessary files for 3D printing the capillary tube holder.