Related papers: Variation in Microbial Growth under Hypergravity
In the growth of bacterial colonies, a great variety of complex patterns are observed in experiments, depending on external conditions and the bacterial species. Typically, existing models employ systems of reaction-diffusion equations or…
Self-sustained turbulent structures have been observed in a wide range of living fluids, yet no quantitative theory exists to explain their properties. We report experiments on active turbulence in highly concentrated 3D suspensions of…
During development, organisms acquire three-dimensional shapes with important physiological consequences. While the basic mechanisms underlying morphogenesis are known in eukaryotes, it is often difficult to manipulate them in vivo. To…
Bacterial communities such as biofilms are widely recognised as being important for survival and persistence of bacteria in harsh environments. Mechanistic models of biofilm growth indicate that the way in which the surface is seeded can…
Nutrient limitation is one of the most common triggers of antibiotic tolerance and persistence. Here, we present two microfluidic setups to study how spatial and temporal variation in nutrient availability lead to increased survival of…
Living organisms have to adjust to their surrounding in order to survive in stressful conditions. We study this mechanism in one of most primitive creatures - photosynthetic green sulfur bacteria. These bacteria absorb photons very…
High hydrostatic pressure is commonly encountered in many environments, but the effects of high pressure on eukaryotic cells have been understudied. To understand the effects of hydrostatic pressure in the model eukaryote, Saccharomyces…
We set up an original apparatus to measure the grain grain friction stress inside a granular medium composed of sodo-silicate-glass beads surrounded by a water vapor atmosphere.We analyze here the influence of the physico chemistry of water…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…
The role of activity on the hydrodynamic dispersion of bacteria in a model porous medium is studied by tracking thousands of bacteria in a microfluidic chip containing randomly placed pillars. We first evaluate the spreading dynamics of two…
The physics of micron-scale biological colonies usually benefits from different out-of-equilibrium sources. In bacterial colonies and cellular tissues, the growth process is among the important active sources that determine the dynamics. In…
Variations of transport efficiency in structured environments between distinct individuals in actively self-propelled systems is both hard to study and poorly understood. Here, we study the transport of a non-tumbling {\ecoli} strain, an…
Bacterial colonies are abundant on living and nonliving surfaces and are known to mediate a broad range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industry. Although extensively researched, from single cells to demographic scales, a…
We have modelled stress concentration around small gaps in anisotropic elastic sheets, corresponding to the peptidoglycan sacculus of bacterial cells, under loading corresponding to the effects of turgor pressure in rod-shaped bacteria. We…
Grain boundary sliding (GBS) is a key deformation mechanism at high homologous temperatures in polycrystalline materials, however, its intrinsic behavior is often obscured by additional strain accommodation processes. In this study,…
To survive starvation, Bacillus subtilis forms durable spores. After asymmetric cell division, the septum grows around the forespore in a process called engulfment, but the mechanism of force generation is unknown. Here, we derived a novel…
We controlled and observed individual magnetotactic bacteria (Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense) inside a 5 {\mu}m high microfluidic channel for over four hours. After a period of constant velocity, the duration of which varied between…
We study colonies of non-motile, rod-shaped bacteria growing on solid substrates. In our model, bacteria interact purely mechanically, by pushing each other away as they grow, and consume a diffusing nutrient. We show that mechanical…
From biofilm and colony formation in bacteria to wound healing and embryonic development in multicellular organisms, groups of living cells must often move collectively. While considerable study has probed the biophysical mechanisms of how…
Certain bacteria form filamentous colonies when the cells fail to separate after dividing. In Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thermus, and cyanobacteria, the filaments can wrap into complex supercoiled structures as the cells grow. The…