Self-organized canals enable long range directed material transport in bacterial communities

  1. Ye Li
  2. Shiqi Liu
  3. Yingdan Zhang
  4. Zi Jing Seng
  5. Haoran Xu
  6. Liang Yang  Is a corresponding author
  7. Yilin Wu  Is a corresponding author
  1. Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
  2. Southern University of Science and Technology, China
  3. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Abstract

Long-range material transport is essential to maintain the physiological functions of multicellular organisms such as animals and plants. By contrast, material transport in bacteria is often short-ranged and limited by diffusion. Here we report a unique form of actively regulated long-range directed material transport in structured bacterial communities. Using Pseudomonas aeruginosa colonies as a model system, we discover that a large-scale and temporally evolving open channel system spontaneously develops in the colony via shear-induced banding. Fluid flows in the open channels support high-speed (up to 450 µm/s) transport of cells and outer membrane vesicles over centimeters, and help to eradicate colonies of a competing species Staphylococcus aureus. The open channels are reminiscent of human-made canals for cargo transport, and the channel flows are driven by interfacial tension mediated by cell-secreted biosurfactants. The spatial-temporal dynamics of fluid flows in the open channels are qualitatively described by flow profile measurement and mathematical modeling. Our findings demonstrate that mechanochemical coupling between interfacial force and biosurfactant kinetics can coordinate large-scale material transport in primitive life forms, suggesting a new principle to engineer self-organized microbial communities.

Data availability

All data are available in the main text or the Supplementary Information.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Ye Li

    Department of Physics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Shiqi Liu

    Department of Physics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Yingdan Zhang

    School of Medicine, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Zi Jing Seng

    Singapore Center for Environmental Life Science Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Haoran Xu

    Department of Physics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-9613-297X
  6. Liang Yang

    Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
    For correspondence
    yangl@sustech.edu.cn
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  7. Yilin Wu

    Department of Physics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
    For correspondence
    ylwu@cuhk.edu.hk
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0392-2137

Funding

Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China (No. 2020YFA0910700)

  • Yilin Wu

Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee (No. 14306820,14307821,RFS2021-4S04 and CUHK Direct Grants)

  • Yilin Wu

Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (No. 2020B1515020003)

  • Liang Yang

Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2019A1515110640)

  • Yingdan Zhang

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2022, Li 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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  1. Ye Li
  2. Shiqi Liu
  3. Yingdan Zhang
  4. Zi Jing Seng
  5. Haoran Xu
  6. Liang Yang
  7. Yilin Wu
(2022)
Self-organized canals enable long range directed material transport in bacterial communities
eLife 11:e79780.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79780

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79780

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