Chemotaxis

Chemotaxis is the phenomenon of attraction or repulsion of living beings depending on the presence in the environment of chemical compounds that are important to these beings. The term can also be understood as “chemical movement”. The term denoting the process was introduced into scientific use by the natural scientist and inventor Carl Friedrich von Gray. He did this in 1829, when he was working on the creation of a “boron mixture,” an antidote against arsenic poisoning. The concept of “chemotactic” was widely used until the middle of the 20th century, until biologists formulated that chemotaxis is a more complex phenomenon. It is necessary to distinguish the chemoreceptor method of orientation from chemokinesis. As for the chemokinetic method, which is inherent in animals, scientists realized that this is a method of movement of living organisms. This has been confirmed by numerous experiments. This method can be implemented both in the reaction to a chemical substance and in the execution of key brain commands.

The method is used in two ways. One of them is called "direct chemotactic jump". The jump requires the expenditure of metabolites. The second method is called “temporary delay of the chemotactic jump.” The method is most often found in arthropods. With this method, there is a big difference between the activation energy of one movement and the second.