Chemokinesis is
chemically prompted
kinesis, a motile response of unicellular
prokaryotic
A prokaryote (; less commonly spelled procaryote) is a single-celled organism whose cell lacks a nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles. The word ''prokaryote'' comes from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'before', and (), meaning 'nut' ...
or
eukaryotic
The eukaryotes ( ) constitute the Domain (biology), domain of Eukaryota or Eukarya, organisms whose Cell (biology), cells have a membrane-bound cell nucleus, nucleus. All animals, plants, Fungus, fungi, seaweeds, and many unicellular organisms ...
organisms to chemicals that cause the cell to make some kind of change in their migratory/swimming behaviour. Changes involve an increase or decrease of speed, alterations of amplitude or frequency of motile character, or direction of migration. However, in contrast to
chemotaxis
Chemotaxis (from ''chemical substance, chemo-'' + ''taxis'') is the movement of an organism or entity in response to a chemical stimulus. Somatic cells, bacteria, and other single-cell organism, single-cell or multicellular organisms direct thei ...
, chemokinesis has a random, non-vectorial moiety, in general.
Due to the random character, techniques dedicated to evaluate chemokinesis are partly different from methods used in chemotaxis research. One of the most valuable ways to measure chemokinesis is computer-assisted (see, e.g.,
Image J) checker-board analysis, which provides data about migration of identical cells, whereas, in Protozoa (e.g.,
Tetrahymena
''Tetrahymena'' is a genus of free-living ciliates, examples of unicellular eukaryotes. The genus Tetrahymena is the most widely studied member of its phylum. It can produce, store and react with different types of hormones. ''Tetrahymena'' cel ...
), techniques based on measurement of opalescence were also developed.
References
External links
Chemotaxis{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140730174544/http://www.chemotaxis.usn.hu/ , date=2014-07-30
Motile cells
Perception
Signal transduction