Related papers: Random motility regulation drives the fragmentatio…

Bacterial conglomerates such as biofilms and microcolonies are ubiquitous in nature and play an important role in industry and medicine. In contrast to well-mixed, diluted cultures routinely used in microbial research, bacteria in a…

How systems are endowed with migration capacity is a fascinating question with implications ranging from the design of novel active systems to the control of microbial populations. Bacteria, which can be found in a variety of environments,…

Microbial ecosystems are commonly modeled by fixed interactions between species in steady exponential growth states. However, microbes often modify their environments so strongly that they are forced out of the exponential state into…

Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…

Microorganisms self-organize in very large communities exhibiting complex fluctuations. Despite recent advances, still the mechanism by which these systems are able to exhibit large variability at the one hand and dynamical robustness on…

Bacteria frequently colonize natural microcavities such as gut crypts, plant apoplasts, and soil pores. Recent studies have shown that the physical structure of these spaces plays a crucial role in shaping the stability and resilience of…

This study investigates the role of spatial segregation, prompted by competition avoidance, as a key mechanism for emergent coexistence within microbial communities. Recognizing these communities as complex adaptive systems, we challenge…

The effect of mechanical interactions between cells in the spreading of bacterial populations was investigated in one-dimensional space. A continuum-mechanics approach, comprising cell migration, proliferation, and exclusion processes, was…

The effect of crowding on the run-and-tumble dynamics of swimmers such as bacteria is studied using a discrete lattice model of mutually excluding particles that move with constant velocity along a direction that is randomized at a rate…

Soil microbial communities are known to be robust against perturbations such as nutrition inputs, which appears as an obstacle for the soil improvement. On the other hand, its adaptable aspect has been also reported. Here we propose simple…

How motile bacteria move near a surface is a problem of fundamental biophysical interest and is key to the emergence of several phenomena of biological, ecological and medical relevance, including biofilm formation. Solid boundaries can…

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…

We experimentally investigate how aerotactic bacteria, confined within a thin liquid film between two solid substrates, respond to a controlled oxygen gradient. We find that the total bacterial number density dictates which mechanism…

Bacteria predate plants and animals by billions of years. Today, they are the world's smallest cells yet they represent the bulk of the world's biomass, and the main reservoir of nutrients for higher organisms. Most bacteria can move on…

We investigate the effect of cooperative interactions in an ensemble of microorganisms, modelled as self-propelled disk-like and rod-like particles, in a three-dimensional turbulent flow to show flocking as an emergent phenomenon. Building…

Models based on surfactant driven instabilities have been employed to describe pattern formation by swarming bacteria. However, by definition, such models cannot account for the effect of bacterial sensing and decision making. Here we…

How diversity is maintained in natural ecosystems is a long-standing question in Theoretical Ecology. By studying a system that combines ecological dynamics, heterogeneous interactions and spatial structure, we uncover a new mechanism for…

Many of the chemical reactions that take place within a living cell are irreversible. Due to evolutionary pressures, the number of allowable reactions within these systems are highly constrained and thus the resulting metabolic networks…

Randomly moving active particles can be herded into directed motion by asymmetric geometric structures. Although such a rectification process has been extensively studied due to its fundamental, biological, and technological relevance, a…

We present a generic mechanism by which reproducing microorganisms, with a diffusivity that depends on the local population density, can form stable patterns. It is known that a decrease of swimming speed with density can promote separation…