Large-scale orientational order in bacterial colonies during inward growth
- Koç University, Turkey
- ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
During colony growth, complex interactions regulate the bacterial orientation, leading to the formation of large-scale ordered structures, including topological defects, microdomains, and branches. These structures may benefit bacterial strains, providing invasive advantages during colonization. Active matter dynamics of growing colonies drives the emergence of these ordered structures. However, additional biomechanical factors also play a significant role during this process. Here we show that the velocity profile of growing colonies creates strong radial orientation during inward growth when crowded populations invade a closed area. During this process, growth geometry sets virtual confinement and dictates the velocity profile. Herein, flow-induced alignment and torque balance on the rod-shaped bacteria result in a new stable orientational equilibrium in the radial direction. Our analysis revealed that the dynamics of these radially oriented structures also known as aster defects, depend on bacterial length and can promote the survival of the longest bacteria around localized nutritional hot spots. The present results indicate a new mechanism underlying structural order and provide mechanistic insights into the dynamics of bacterial growth on complex surfaces.
Data availability
The critical experimental data generated or analyzed during this study are provided as supporting video files.Code Availability:The codes utilized previously published open-source software from https://depts.washington.edu/soslab/gro/ and are made available on GitHub (https://github.com/mustafa-basaran/Large_Scale_Orientation_Bacteria).
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Author details
Funding
EMBO Installation Grant (IG 3275)
- Askin Kocabas
BAGEP (young investigator award)
- Askin Kocabas
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Basaran et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Large-scale orientational order in bacterial colonies during inward growth
eLife 11:e72187.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72187
