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The bacterium samples its surroundings in time. A sustained increase in chemoattractant makes a favorable run persist by reducing the chance of tumbling; declining chemoattractant makes reorientation more likely. Individual tumbles need not point up the gradient. Biasing run durations can generate net migration even if reorientation itself is random. This is temporal comparison, not a direct measurement of a concentration gradient across the short cell body.

Compare the swimming time over length $\ell$, $t_a=\ell /v$, with diffusion over the same scale, $t_D\sim {\ell }^2/D$. Their ratio is the Péclet number $\mathrm{Pe}=v\ell /D$. The crossover estimate isOrder-one factors depend on the chosen diffusion-distance convention. A hypothetical stirrer of extent $d$ must instead have $Ud/D$ of order one, givingThese are transport-scale estimates, not a proof of a particular increase in uptake. Around a one-micrometre body, $vd/D\simeq 0.03$: local diffusive supply is already rapid. Actual uptake enhancement depends on the nutrient field and the cell's uptake boundary condition, neither supplied. The long run can help the organism reach a better nutrient region without implying that it greatly increases the flux from a uniform bath. E. coli normally uses bacterial flagella; the cilium in this comparison is a hypothetical generic stirring appendage, not its actual locomotor organelle.