Abstract
Bacteria develop complex patterns depending on growth condition. For example, Bacillus subtilis exhibit five different patterns depending on substrate hardness and nutrient concentration. We present a unified integro-differential model that reproduces the entire experimentally observed morphology diagram at varying nutrient concentrations and substrate hardness. The model allows a comprehensive and quantitative comparison between experimental and numerical variables and parameters, such as colony growth rate, nutrient concentration and diffusion constants. As a result, the role of the different physical mechanisms underlying and regulating the growth of the colony can be evaluated.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 91-99 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena |
Volume | 318-319 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 1 Apr 2016 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Funding
We thank Ismael Rafols for sharing experimental results and electronic copies of Figs. 1 (A) and 4 (A). This article has been supported in part by the NSF Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (Grant Nos. PHY-1427654 and NSF-MCB-1214457 ) at Rice University and by the Tauber Family Funds and the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems at Tel Aviv University.
Funders | Funder number |
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National Science Foundation | 1241332, 1427654 |
Rice University | |
Center for Theoretical Biological Physics | PHY-1427654, NSF-MCB-1214457 |
Tel Aviv University |
Keywords
- Bacterial colonies
- Pattern formation
- Random lattice
- Reaction-diffusion model