Related papers: Biofilm self-patterning: mechanical forces drive a…
Mechanical interactions among cells in a growing microbial colony can significantly influence the colony's spatial genetic structure and, thus, evolutionary outcomes such as the fates of rare mutations. Here, we computationally investigate…
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…
Cells and microorganisms employ dynamic shape changes to enable steering and avoidance for efficient spatial exploration and collective organization. In contrast, active colloids, their synthetic counterparts, currently lack similar…
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.…
Anisotropic collective patterns occur frequently in the morphogenesis of 2D biofilms. These patterns are often attributed to growth regulation mechanisms and differentiation based on gradients of diffusing nutrients and signalling…
Living materials such as biological tissues or bacterial colonies are collections of heterogeneous entities of different sizes, capable of autonomous motion, and often capable of cooperating. Such a degree of complexity brings to collective…
Biofilms are spatially organized microorganism colonies embedded in a self-produced matrix, conferring to the microbial community resistance to environmental stresses. Motile bacteria have been observed swimming in the matrix of pathogenic…
Biomolecular condensates self-assemble when proteins and nucleic acids spontaneously demix to form droplets within the crowded intracellular milieu. This simple mechanism underlies the formation of a wide variety of membraneless…
We model an enclosed system of bacteria, whose motility-induced phase separation is coupled to slow population dynamics. Without noise, the system shows both static phase separation and a limit cycle, in which a rising global population…
The formation of bacterial biofilms on solid surfaces within a fluid starts when bacteria attach to the substrate. Understanding environmental factors affecting the attachment and the early stages of the biofilm development as well as the…
Active matter consists of units that generate mechanical work by consuming energy. Examples include living systems, such as assemblies of bacteria and biological tissues, biopolymers driven by molecular motors, and suspensions of synthetic…
The ability of bacteria to colonize and grow on different surfaces is an essential process for biofilm development and depends on complex biomechanical interactions between the biofilm and the underlying substrate. Changes in the physical…
Many biological materials must couple mechanical strength with the ability to rapidly self-assemble at a specific location. In particular, biomolecular condensates readily self-assemble via phase separation, but may also need to resist…
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
Bacterial biofilms cost an enormous amount of resources in the health, medical, and industrial sectors. To understand early biofilm formation, beginning from planktonic states of active bacterial suspensions (such as Escherichia coli) to…
Propagating spiral waves have been discovered in various chemical, biological and physical systems. Spiral waves in multicellular organisms are often associated with essential living functions. Although certain eukaryotic microorganisms…
The bacterium {\em Bacilus subtilis} frequently forms biofilms at the interface between the culture medium and the air. We develop a mathematical model that couples a description of bacteria as individual discrete objects to the standard…
Formation of highly ordered structures usually needs to overcome a high free-energy barrier that is greatly beyond the ability of thermodynamic fluctuation, such that the system would be easily trapped into a state with many defects and the…
The diffusion of particles in complex media has gained significant interest due to its dual relevance: probing the viscoelastic properties of materials via microrheology and assessing the extent of particle displacement over time. In this…
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…