Related papers: Mathematical modelling of nutrient-dependent biofi…
A packed community of exponentially proliferating microbes will spread in size exponentially. However, due to nutrient depletion, mechanical constraints, or other limitations, exponential proliferation is not indefinite, and the spreading…
Nutrient limitation is one of the most common triggers of antibiotic tolerance and persistence. Here, we present two microfluidic setups to study how spatial and temporal variation in nutrient availability lead to increased survival of…
High-throughput experimental techniques and bioinformatics tools make it possible to obtain reconstructions of the metabolism of microbial species. Combined with mathematical frameworks such as flux balance analysis, which assumes that…
Nutrient gradients and limitations play a pivotal role in the life of all microbes, both in their natural habitat as well as in artificial, microfluidic systems. Spatial concentration gradients of nutrients in densely packed cell…
Bacteria are ubiquitous in our daily lives, either as motile planktonic cells or as immobilized surface-attached biofilms. These different phenotypic states play key roles in agriculture, environment, industry, and medicine; hence, it is…
Microbial communities routinely have several alternative stable states observed for the same environmental parameters. Sudden and irreversible transitions between these states make external manipulation of these systems more complicated. To…
Biofilms are complex structures which are inhabited by numerous amount of different species of microorganisms. Due to their ubiquity, they influence human life on an everyday basis. It is therefore important to understand the interactions…
Cell colonies of bacteria, tumour cells and fungi, under nutrient limited growth conditions, exhibit complex branched growth patterns. In order to investigate this phenomenon we present a simple hybrid cellular automaton model of cell…
A mathematical model for emerging contaminants sorption in multispecies biofilms, based on a continuum approach and mass conservation principles is presented. Diffusion of contaminants within the biofilm is described using a…
Understanding how a diversity of plants in agroecosystems affects the adaptation of pathogens in a key issue in agroecology. We analyze PDE systems describing the dynamics of adaptation of two phenotypically structured populations, under…
Biofilm growth changes many physical properties of porous media such as porosity, permeability and mass transport parameters. The growth depends on various environmental conditions, and in particular, on flow rates. Modeling the evolution…
A dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model for the quantitative simulation of biofilm growth controlled by substrate (nutrient) consumption, advective and diffusive substrate transport, and hydrodynamic interactions with fluid flow…
Microbial communities routinely have several possible species compositions or community states observed for the same environmental parameters. Changes in these parameters can trigger abrupt and persistent transitions (regime shifts) between…
We propose and analyze a model for antibiotic resistance transfer in a bacterial biofilm and examine antibiotic dosing strategies that are effective in bacterial elimination. In particular, we consider a 1-D model of a biofilm with…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
Numerous experimental studies have demonstrated that the microenvironment is a key regulator influencing the proliferative and migrative potentials of species. Spatial and temporal disturbances lead to adverse and hazardous…
Bacteria often develop distinct phenotypes to adapt to environmental stress. In particular, they can produce biofilms, dense communities of bacteria that live in a complex extracellular matrix. Bacterial biofilms provide a safe haven from…
We present an SI epidemic model whereby a continuous variable captures variability in proliferative potential and resistance to infection among susceptibles. The occurrence of heritable, spontaneous changes in these phenotype and the…
The present paper proposes a novel method of quantification of the variation in biofilm architecture, in correlation with the alteration of growth conditions that include, variations of substrate and conditioning layer. The polymeric…
The dynamics of cellular aggregates is driven by the interplay of mechanochemical processes and cellular activity. Although deterministic models may capture mechanical features, local chemical fluctuations trigger random cell responses,…