Related papers: Verticalization of bacterial biofilms
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…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
Several bacteria and bacteria strands form biofilms in different environmental conditions, e.g. pH, temperature, nutrients, etc. Biofilm growth, therefore, is an extremely robust process. Because of this, while biofilm growth is a complex…
The extracellular matrix of biofilms presents a dense and intricate architecture. Numerous biophysical properties of the matrix surrounding microbial cells contribute to the heterogeneity of biofilms and their functions at the microscale.…
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…
During colony growth, complex interactions regulate the bacterial orientation, leading to the formation of large-scale ordered structures, including topological defects and microdomains. These structures may benefit bacterial strains,…
We derive a physiologically structured multiscale model for biofilm development. The model has components on two spatial scales, which induce different time scales into the problem. The macroscopic behavior of the system is modeled using…
Controlling bacterial surface adhesion and subsequent biofilm formation in fluid systems is crucial for the safety and efficacy of medical and industrial processes. Here, we theoretically examine the transport of bacteria close to surfaces,…
Bacterial colonies growing on surfaces are shaped by mechanical stresses transmitted through the community, governed by the balance between cell growth and steric and cell-substrate interactions. Using overdamped dynamics simulations of…
Many organisms form colonies for a transient period of time to withstand environmental pressure. Bacterial biofilms are a prototypical example of such behavior. Despite significant interest across disciplines, physical mechanisms governing…
We investigate the growth of a film of some element B on a substrate made of another substrance A in a model of molecular beam epitaxy. A vertical exchange mechanism allows the A-atoms to stay on the growing surface with a certain…
Bacteria can adjust the structure of colonies and biofilms to enhance their survival rate under external stress. Here, we explore the link between bacterial interaction forces and colony structure. We show that the activity of extracellular…
In some conditions, bacteria self-organise into biofilms, supracellular structures made of a self-produced embedding matrix, mainly composed on polysaccharides, DNA, proteins and lipids. It is known that bacteria change their colony/matrix…
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
Biological cells are able to adapt their behaviour in response to environmental cues. Durotaxis is a phenomenon in which cells adjust their migration depending on the mechanical properties of a surrounding substrate. Although durotaxis has…
Densely packed, motile bacteria can adopt collective states not seen in conventional, passive materials. These states remain in many ways mysterious, and their physical characterization can aid our understanding of natural bacterial…
Colonies of bacteria grown on thin agar plate exhibit fractal patterns as a result of adaptation to their environments. The bacterial colony pattern formation is regulated crucially by chemotaxis, the movement of cells along a chemical…
Our fluid dynamics video shows the response of a layer of viscoelastic fluid to an array of four-roll mills steadily rotating underneath. When the relaxation time of the fluid is sufficiently long, the fluid divides into "cells" with a…
We propose a general parametrizable model to capture the dynamic interaction among bacteria in the formation of micro-colonies. micro-colonies represent the first social step towards the formation of structured multicellular communities…
This study systematically investigates the dynamics of the bacterial transition from free-swimming to surface adhesion, a process characterized by both height $h$ and inclination angle $\Psi$. The surface entrapment process is divided into…