Morphological analysis of Bacillux polymyxa colonies: digital image analysis in wide-field microscopy

Abstract

In the last twenty years the growth of bacterial colonies has been studied experimentally using images with different growth patterns, but the resolution of those images is in areas of tenths of microns without range information. On the other hand, theoretical studies considering the bacteria as systems with collective behavior controlled by a reduced number of parameters have been developed. The present work aims to study morphological and dynamic growth of Bacillus polymyxa colonies by the technique of digital image analysis in wide-field microscopy, which provides high resolution, both in texture and topography. Getting a three-dimensional behavior of dynamic biological systems is useful to create structures and materials with different physical and biological properties for industrial applications.