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Many bacterial species produce toxins that inhibit their competitors. We model this phenomenon by extending classic two-species Lotka-Volterra competition in one spatial dimension to incorporate toxin production by one species. Considering…
Soft surfaces, spanning vastly different environmental and biomedical settings, are frequently colonised by surface-associated bacteria. Yet, how soft surfaces govern bacterial dynamics and their self-organisation into colonies remains…
To maintain homeostasis, living cells process information with networks of interacting molecules. Traditional models for cellular information processing have focused on networks of chemical reactions between molecules. Here, we describe how…
We measure the liquid content, the bubble speeds, and the distribution of bubble sizes, in a vertical column of aqueous foam maintained in steady-state by continuous bubbling of gas into a surfactant solution. Nearly round bubbles…
We present a mathematical model based on a system of partial differential equations (PDEs) with cross-diffusion and reaction terms to describe ecological interactions between multiple bacterial species and substrates within microaggregates,…
Growing tissue and bacterial colonies are active matter systems where cell divisions and cellular motion generate active stress. Although they operate in the non-equilibrium regime, these biological systems can form large-scale ordered…
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
We propose a modeling approach to study how mature biofilms spread and colonize new surfaces by predicting the formation and growth of satellite colonies generated by dispersing biofilms. This model provides the basis for better…
In many environmental and industrial applications, the mass transfer of gases in liquid solvents is a fundamental process during the generation of bubbles for specific purposes or, vice versa, the removal of entrapped bubbles. We address…
The ability of many living systems to actively self-propel underlies critical biomedical, environmental, and industrial processes. While such active transport is well-studied in uniform settings, environmental complexities such as geometric…
The separation of substances into different phases is ubiquitous in nature and important scientifically and technologically. This phenomenon may become drastically different if the species involved, whether molecules or supramolecular…
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…
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…
Recent biological experiments have shown that certain types of cells are able to move in structured and confined environment even without the activation of focal adhesion. Focusing on this particular phenomenon and based on previous works,…
The self-organization of microbial ecosystems involves a large variety of mechanisms, ranging from biochemical signaling to population dynamics. Among these, the role of motility regulation has been little studied, despite the importance of…
Communities of swimming microorganisms often thrive near liquid-air interfaces. We study how such `active carpets' shape their aquatic environment by driving biogenic transport in the water column beneath them. The hydrodynamic stirring…
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…
Meso-scale turbulence was originally observed experimentally in various suspensions of swimming bacteria, as well as in the collective motion of active colloids. The corresponding large-scale dynamical patterns were reproduced in a simple…
Segregation of populations is a key question in evolution theory. One important aspect is the relation between spatial organization and the population's composition. Here we study a specific example -- sectors in expanding bacterial…
Population heterogeneity is ubiquitous among active living systems, but little is known about its role in determining their spatial organization and large-scale dynamics. Combining evidence from synthetic active fluids assembled from…