M. T. Khan, J. Cammann, A. Sengupta, E. Renzi, M. G. Mazza
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Bacteria are prolific at colonizing diverse surfaces under a widerange of environmental conditions, and exhibit fascinating examples of self-organization across scales. Though it has recently attracted considerable interest, the role of mechanical forces in the collective behavior of bacterial colonies is not yet fully understood. Here, we construct a model of growing rod-like bacteria, such as Escherichia coli based purely on mechanical forces. We perform overdamped molecular dynamics simulations of the colony starting from a few cells in contact with a surface. As the colony grows, microdomains of strongly aligned cells grow and proliferate. Our model captures both the initial growth of a bacterial colony and also shows characteristic signs of capturing the experimentally observed transition to multilayered colonies over longer timescales. We compare our results with experiments on E. coli cells and analyze the statistics of microdomains.
期刊介绍:
Condensed Matter Physics contains original and review articles in the field of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics of equilibrium and nonequilibrium processes, relativistic mechanics of interacting particle systems.The main attention is paid to physics of solid, liquid and amorphous systems, phase equilibria and phase transitions, thermal, structural, electric, magnetic and optical properties of condensed matter. Condensed Matter Physics is published quarterly.