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E. coli is a tiny swimmer in a world where water is as thick as jelly. Inside our gut, it doesn't glide freely but fights through mucus — a tangled web of long molecules, like a ball of knotted threads. How does a bacterium manage to move in such an environment?

Scientists built a computer model of a bacterium with an oval head and a thin flagellar tail swimming through mucus. The tail works like a tiny propeller, but it's so thin that it slips between the mucus threads. The model shows: the tail pushes water, water pushes mucus, and how mucus flows around the head and tail determines the bacterium's speed.

The main result: the bacterium's motion can be broken down into three parts — how it moves its body, how the tail works, and how mucus pushes back. This allows quick calculations of how a bacterium will swim in any mucus. Previously, such calculations took days; now they take minutes.

This approach could help understand how pathogenic bacteria sneak through protective mucus in the lungs or gut, and perhaps suggest ways to stop them.