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Bacterial biofilms are usually assumed to originate from individual cells deposited on a surface. However, many biofilm-forming bacteria tend to aggregate in the planktonic phase so that it is possible that many natural and infectious…
Many cells use calcium signalling to carry information from the extracellular side of the plasma membrane to targets in their interior. Since virtually all cells employ a network of biochemical reactions for Ca2+ signalling, much effort has…
Organisms are nonequilibrium, stationary systems self-organized via spontaneous symmetry breaking and undergoing metabolic cycles with broken detailed balance in the environment. The thermodynamic free-energy principle describes an…
A large number of studies have shown the existence of metabolic covalent modifications in different molecular structures, able to store biochemical information that is not encoded by the DNA. Some of these covalent mark patterns can be…
We experimentally study the emergence of collective bacterial swimming, a phenomenon often referred to as bacterial turbulence. A phase diagram of the flow of 3D E. coli suspensions spanned by bacterial concentration, the swimming speed of…
We study a generic model for the polarisation and motility of self-propelled soft objects, biological cells or biomimetic systems, interacting with a viscous substrate. The active forces generated by the cell on the substrate are modelled…
The metabolic activity of microbes has played an essential role in the evolution and persistence of life on Earth. Microbial metabolism plays a primary role in the flow of carbon, nitrogen and other elements through the biosphere on a…
The mechanics of animal cells is strongly determined by stress fibers, which are contractile filament bundles that form dynamically in response to extracellular cues. Stress fibers allow the cell to adapt its mechanics to environmental…
To survive starvation, the bacterium Bacillus subtilis forms durable spores. The initial step of sporulation is asymmetric cell division, leading to a large mother-cell and a small forespore compartment. After division is completed and the…
Presented with sensory challenges, living cells employ extensive noisy, fluctuating signalling and communication among themselves to compute a physiologically proper response which often results in symmetry breaking. We propose, based on…
Many bacterial species exchange signaling molecules to coordinate population-wide responses. For this process known as quorum sensing the concentration of the respective molecules is crucial. Here we consider the interaction between…
Bacteria can form a great variety of spatially heterogeneous cell density patterns, ranging from simple concentric rings to dynamical spiral waves appearing in growing colonies. These pattern formation phenomena are important as they…
Biofilms are antibiotic-resistant bacterial aggregates that grow on moist surfaces and can trigger hospital-acquired infections. They provide a classical example in biology where the dynamics of cellular communities may be observed and…
Communication and coordination play a major role in the ability of bacterial cells to adapt to ever changing environments and conditions. Recent work has shown that such coordination underlies several aspects of bacterial responses…
Metabolic scaling is one of the most important patterns in biology. Theory explaining the 3/4-power size-scaling of biological metabolic rate does not predict the non-linear scaling observed for smaller life forms. Here we present a new…
Bacterial cells exhibit a diverse array of shapes and sizes, largely governed by their cell walls in conjunction with cytoskeletal proteins and internal turgor pressure. The present study develops a theoretical framework for modeling the…
Quantifying the action of antibiotics on biofilms is essential to devise therapies against chronic infections. Biofilms are bacterial communities attached to moist surfaces, sheltered from external aggressions by a polymeric matrix.…
A stochastic model is used to assess the effect of external parameters on the development of submerged biofilms on smooth and rough surfaces. The model includes basic cellular mechanisms, such as division and spreading, together with an…
We present a new kinetic equation for cell migration driven by mechanical interactions with the substrate, an effect not previously captured in kinetic models, and essential for explaining observed collective behaviors such as those in…
We study a model of contraction-based cell motility inside a microchannel to investigate the regulation of cell polarization and motion by the mechanical resistance of the environment. A positive feedback between the asymmetry of the…