Multicellular self-organization of P. aeruginosa due to interactions with secreted trails

Abstract

Guided movement in response to slowly diffusing polymeric trails provides a unique mechanism for self-organization of some microorganisms. To elucidate how this signaling route leads to microcolony formation, we experimentally probe the trajectory and orientation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa that propel themselves on a surface using type IV pili motility appendages, which preferentially attach to deposited exopolysaccharides. We construct a stochastic model by analyzing single-bacterium trajectories, and show that the resulting theoretical prediction for the many-body behavior of the bacteria is in quantitative agreement with our experimental characterization of how cells explore the surface via a power law strategy.

10 pages

References in corpus (5)

• Motility-Induced Phase Separation
• Collective motion of self-propelled particles interacting without cohesion
• Collective motion and nonequilibrium cluster formation in colonies of gliding bacteria
• Dynamic clustering and chemotactic collapse of self-phoretic active particles
• Collective Dynamics of Dividing Chemotactic Cells