Related papers: How do biofilms feel their environment?
Advances in synthetic biology allow us to engineer bacterial collectives with pre-specified characteristics. However, the behavior of these collectives is difficult to understand, as cellular growth and division as well as extra-cellular…
Thin films made of deformable micro- and nano-units, such as biological membranes, polymer interfaces, and particle-laden liquid surfaces, exhibit a complex behavior during drying, with consequences for various applications like wound…
Numerical Simulations are employed to create amorphous nano-films of a chosen thickness on a crystalline substrate which induces strain on the film. The films are grown by a vapor deposition technique which was recently developed to create…
The survival of many microorganisms, like \textit{Leptospira} or \textit{Spiroplasma} bacteria, can depend on their ability to navigate towards regions of favorable viscosity. While this ability, called viscotaxis, has been observed in…
A simulation approach to the stochastic growth of bacterial towers is presented, in which a non-uniform and finite nutrient supply essentially determines the emerging structure through elementary chemotaxis. The method is based on cellular…
When plated onto substrates, cell morphology and even stem cell differentiation are influenced by the stiffness of their environment. Stiffer substrates give strongly spread (eventually polarized) cells with strong focal adhesions, and…
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…
The dynamics of growth of bacterial populations has been extensively studied for planktonic cells in well-agitated liquid culture, in which all cells have equal access to nutrients. In the real world, bacteria are more likely to live in…
Hydrogels are widespread soft materials, which can serve a wide range of applications. The control over the viscoelastic properties of the gel is of paramount importance. Ongoing environmental issues have raised the consumer's concern…
Microcolonies are aggregates of a few dozen to a few thousand cells exhibited by many bacteria. The formation of microcolonies is a crucial step towards the formation of more mature bacterial communities known as biofilms, but also marks a…
Various bacterial strains (e.g. strains belonging to the genera Bacillus, Paenibacillus, Serratia and Salmonella) exhibit colonial branching patterns during growth on poor semi-solid substrates. These patterns reflect the bacterial…
Biofilm infections on medical implants are difficult to eradicate because insufficient nutrient availability promotes antibiotic-tolerant persister cells that survive treatment and reseed growth. Existing mathematical models usually omit…
We report bacterial growth under hypergravitational stress. Cultures of E. coli and B. subtilis were subjected to the gravitational stress (38g) and their growth curves were measured using UV-VIS spectrophotometer. Experiments were also…
In order to grow in any given environment, bacteria need to collect information about the medium composition and implement suitable growth strategies by adjusting their regulatory and metabolic degrees of freedom. In the standard sense,…
Here we demonstrate the controlled growth of Bi(110) and Bi(111) films on an (insulating) $\alpha$-Al$_2$O$_3$(0001) substrate by surface X-ray diffraction and X-ray reflectivity using synchrotron radiation. At temperatures as low as 40 K,…
Thin film deposition on weakly interacting substrates exhibits a unique growth mode characterized by initially strong island formation and rapidly increasing roughness, which reaches a maximum and subsequently decreases as the film returns…
Using three-dimensional numerical simulations, we demonstrate the growth saturation of an unstable thin liquid film on micropatterned hydrophilic-hydrophobic substrates. We consider different transverse-striped micropatterns, characterized…
The focus of this paper is the numerical solution of a pore-scale model for the growth of a permeable biofilm. The model includes water flux inside the biofilm, different biofilm components, and shear stress on the biofilm-water interface.…
Microorganisms hosted in abiotic structures have led to engineered living materials that can grow, sense and adapt in ways that mimic biological systems. Although porous structures should favor colonization by microorganisms, they have not…
The population growth of a Staphylococcus aureus culture was followed by rheological measurements, under steady-state and dynamic shear flows. We observed a rich viscoelastic behaviour as a consequence of the bacteria activity. First, the…