Related papers: Substrate geometry affects population dynamics in …
Recent studies have shown that packings of cells, both eukaryotic cellular tissues and growing or swarming bacterial colonies, can often be understood as active nematic fluids. A key property of volume-conserving active nematic model…
We study the interplay of population growth and evolutionary dynamics using a stochastic model based on birth and death events. In contrast to the common assumption of an independent population size, evolution can be strongly affected by…
Cellular populations such as avascular tumors and microbial biofilms may "invade" or grow into surrounding populations. The invading population is often comprised of a heterogeneous mixture of cells with varying growth rates. The population…
Biofilms exposed to flow experience shear stress, which leads to a competitive interaction between the growth and development of a biofilm and shearing. In this study, Pseudonomas fluorescene biofilm was grown in a microfluidic channel and…
It is widely accepted that population genetics theory is the cornerstone of evolutionary analyses. Empirical tests of the theory, however, are challenging because of the complex relationships between space, dispersal, and evolution.…
The study of growth-induced surface wrinkling in constrained bilayers comprising a thin film attached to a thick substrate is a canonical model for understanding pattern formation in many biological systems. While the bilayer model has…
Culturing cells confined in microscale geometries has been reported in many studies this last decade, in particular following the development of microfluidic-based applications and lab-on-a-chip devices. Such studies usually examine growth…
The dynamics of biofilm lifecycle are deeply influenced by the surrounding environment and the interactions between sessile and planktonic phenotypes. Bacterial biofilms typically develop in three distinct stages: attachment of cells to a…
An organism that is newly introduced into an existing population has a survival probability that is dependent on both the population density of its environment and the competition it experiences with the members of that population.…
The expansion of biological species in natural environments is usually described as the combined effect of individual spatial dispersal and growth. In the case of aquatic ecosystems flow transport can also be extremely relevant as an extra,…
Bacillus subtilis biofilms were grown in laminar channel flow at wall shear stress spanning one order of magnitude ($\tau_w = 0.068$ Pa to $\tau_w = 0.67$ Pa). We monitor, non-invasively, the evolution of the three-dimensional distribution…
In this paper, we derive upscaled equations for modelling biofilm growth in porous media. The resulting macro-scale mathematical models consider permeable multi-species biofilm including water flow, transport, detachment and reactions. The…
Bacterial growth environment strongly influences the efficacy of antibiotic treatment, with slow growth often being associated with decreased susceptibility. Yet in many cases the connection between antibiotic susceptibility and pathogen…
Can topography be used to control bacteria accumulation? We address this question in the model system of smooth-swimming and run-and-tumble \textit{Escherichia coli} swimming near a sinusoidal surface, and show that the accumulation of…
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.…
Biofilm growth and transport in confined systems frequently occur in natural and engineered systems. Designing customizable engineered porous materials for controllable biofilm transportation properties could significantly improve the rapid…
The expansion of a population into new habitat is a transient process that leaves its footprints in the genetic composition of the expanding population. How the structure of the environment shapes the population front and the evolutionary…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…
Free boundaries of biofilms advancing on surfaces evolve according to conservation laws coupled with systems of partial differential equations for velocities, pressures and chemicals affecting cell behavior. Thin film approximations lead to…
We investigate the dynamics of a colony of crawling, proliferating cells with a minimal, mechanical cell model. The cells consist of two disks, modelling the cell body and a pseudopod, connected by a finite extensible spring. The cells…