DELL'ARCIPRETE, D.; BLOW, M. L.; BROWN, A.T.; FARRELL, F. D. C.; LINTUVUORI, Juho S; MCVEY, A. F.; MARENDUZZO, D.; POON, Wilson C. K.

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06370-3

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DELL'ARCIPRETE, D.
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy [Edinburgh]
Dipartimento di Fisica [Roma La Sapienza]

BLOW, M. L.
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy [Edinburgh]

BROWN, A.T.
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy [Edinburgh]

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Nature Communications. 2018, vol. 9, p. 4190

Nature Publishing Group

Resumen en inglés

How a single bacterium becomes a colony of many thousand cells is important in biomedicine and food safety. Much is known about the molecular and genetic bases of this process, but less about the underlying physical mechanisms. Here we study the growth of single-layer micro-colonies of rod-shaped Escherichia coli bacteria confined to just under the surface of soft agarose by a glass slide. Analysing this system as a liquid crystal, we find that growth-induced activity fragments the colony into microdomains of well-defined size, whilst the associated flow orients it tangentially at the boundary. Topological defect pairs with charges ±1/2 are produced at a constant rate, with the +1/2 defects being propelled to the periphery. Theoretical modelling suggests that these phenomena have different physical origins from similar observations in other extensile active nematics, and a growing bacterial colony belongs to a new universality class, with features reminiscent of the expanding universe.< Leer menos

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06370-3

Proyecto europeo

The Physics of Active Particle Suspensions
Dynamics of Confined Complex Suspensions

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Centros de investigación

Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d'Aquitaine (LOMA) - UMR 5798