Related papers: Formation and Dissolution of Bacterial Colonies
Communication between cells is realized by exchange of biochemical substances. Due to internal organization of living systems and variability of external parameters, the exchange is heavily influenced by perturbations of various parameters…
How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…
Bacterial colonies can form a wide variety of shapes and structures based on ambient and internal conditions. To help understand the mechanisms that determine the structure of and the diversity within these colonies, various numerical…
The emergent spatial patterns generated by growing bacterial colonies have been the focus of intense study in physics during the last twenty years. Both experimental and theoretical investigations have made possible a clear qualitative…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
Biofilms are communities of microorganisms that grow on virtually all surfaces with sufficient nutrients including aquatic and industrial water systems and medical devices. Biofilms are complex, structured communities where the interplay of…
A mathematical model for emerging contaminants sorption in multispecies biofilms, based on a continuum approach and mass conservation principles is presented. Diffusion of contaminants within the biofilm is described using a…
Bacteria are able to respond to environmental signals by changing their rules of movement. When we take into account chemical signals in the environment, this behaviour is often called chemotaxis. At the individual-level, chemotaxis…
Biofilms in porous media critically influence hydraulic properties in environmental and engineered systems. However, a mechanistic understanding of how microbial life controls permeability remains elusive. By combining microfluidics,…
The large-scale collective behavior of biological systems can be characterized by macroscopic transport, which arises from the non-equilibrium microscopic interactions among individual constituents. A prominent example is the formation of…
Biomolecular condensates are small droplets forming spontaneously in biological cells via phase separation. They play a role in many cellular processes, but it is unclear how cells control them. Cellular regulation often relies on…
Bacterial colonies composed of elongated cells form active nematic fluids that spontaneously self-organise into ordered domains of aligned cells and exhibit self-generated chaotic flows powered by cell growth. While their dynamics have…
Biomolecules composed of a limited set of chemical building blocks can co-localize into distinct, spatially segregated compartments known as biomolecular condensates. While many condensates are known to form spontaneously via phase…
We formulate the thin-film hydrodynamics of a suspension of polar self-driven particles and show that it is prone to several instabilities through the interplay of activity, polarity and the existence of a free surface. Our approach…
We introduce a general theoretical framework to study the shape dynamics of actively growing and remodeling surfaces. Using this framework we develop a physical model for growing bacterial cell walls and study the interplay of cell shape…
Flagellated bacteria are hydrodynamically attracted to rigid walls, yet past work shows a 'hovering' state where they swim stably at a finite height above surfaces. We use numerics and theory to reveal the physical origin of hovering.…
Droplet formation has emerged as an essential concept for the spatiotemporal organisation of biomolecules in cells. However, classical descriptions of droplet dynamics based on passive liquid-liquid phase separation cannot capture the…
The hydrodynamic interactions among bacterial cell bodies, flagella, and surrounding boundaries are essential for understanding bacterial motility in complex environments. In this study, we demonstrate that each slender flagellum can be…
In nature, bacterial collectives typically consist of multiple species, which are interacting both biochemically and physically. Nonetheless, past studies on the physical properties of swarming bacteria were focused on axenic (single…
The enteric bacterium Proteus mirabilis, which is a pathogen that forms biofilms in vivo, can swarm over hard surfaces and form concentric ring patterns in colonies. Colony formation involves two distinct cell types: swarmer cells that…