Motile response of unicellular prokaryotic or eukaryotic 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 chemotaxis, 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 way to measure chemokinesis is computer assisted (see e.g. Image J) checker-board analysis which provides data about migration of identical cells.
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