Confinement-induced self-organization in growing bacterial colonies

Abstract

We investigate the emergence of global alignment in colonies of dividing rod-shaped cells under confinement. Using molecular dynamics simulations and continuous modeling, we demonstrate that geometrical anisotropies in the confining environment give rise to imbalance in the normal stresses, which, in turn, drives a collective rearrangement of the cells. This behavior crucially relies on the colony's solid-like mechanical response at short time scales and can be recovered within the framework of active hydrodynamics upon modeling bacterial colonies as growing viscoelastic gels characterized by Maxwell-like stress relaxation.

arXiv comment10 pages, 8 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Particle-resolved topological defects of smectic colloidal liquid crystals in extreme confinement
• Large-scale orientational order in bacterial colonies during inward growth
• Collective mechano-response dynamically tunes cell-size distributions in growing bacterial colonies
• Microdomains and Stress Distributions in Bacterial Monolayers on Curved Interfaces
• Boundaries control active channel flows
• Hyperdisordered cell packing on a growing surface
• Proliferating Nematic That Collectively Senses an Anisotropic Substrate
• Stress and Alignment Response to Curved Obstacles in Growing Bacterial Monolayers
• Strain rate controls alignment in growing bacterial monolayers
• Sensitive particle shape dependence of growth-induced mesoscale nematic structure
• Biofilm self-patterning: mechanical forces drive a reorientation cascade
• Topology of orientational defects in confined smectic liquid crystals