English

Collective behavior of quorum-sensing run-and-tumble particles in confinement

Soft Condensed Matter 2016-02-22 v1 Statistical Mechanics Biological Physics Cell Behavior

Abstract

We study a generic model for quorum-sensing bacteria in circular confinement. Every bacterium produces signaling molecules, the local concentration of which triggers a response when a certain threshold is reached. If this response lowers the motility then an aggregation of bacteria occurs, which differs fundamentally from standard motility-induced phase separation due to the long-ranged nature of the concentration of signal molecules. We analyze this phenomenon analytically and by numerical simulations employing two different protocols leading to stationary cluster and ring morphologies, respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1601.01512,
  title  = {Collective behavior of quorum-sensing run-and-tumble particles in confinement},
  author = {Markus Rein and Nike Heinß and Friederike Schmid and Thomas Speck},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.01512},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett