A diffusion-reaction model for the growth of bacterial colonies is presented. The often observed cooperative behavior developed by bacteria which increases their motility in adverse growth conditions is here introduced as a nonlinear diffusion term. The presence of this mechanism depends on a response which can present hysteresis. By changing only the concentrations of agar and initial nutrient, numerical integration of the proposed model reproduces the different patterns shown by {\it Bacillus subtilis} OG-01.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9904367,
title = {Modelling of spatio-temporal patterns in bacterial colonies},
author = {A. M. Lacasta and I. R. Cantalapiedra and C. E. Auguet and A. Penaranda and L. Ramirez-Piscina},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9904367},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
1 tex file and 6 ps figures. Accepted in Phys.Rev.E