Collective mechano-response dynamically tunes cell-size distributions in growing bacterial colonies

Abstract

Mechanical stresses stemming from environmental factors are a key determinant of cellular behavior and physiology. Yet, the role of self-induced biomechanical stresses in growing bacterial colonies has remained largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate how collective mechanical forcing plays an important role in the dynamics of the cell size of growing bacteria. We observe that the measured elongation rate of well-nourished \textit{Escherichia coli} cells decreases over time, depending on the free area around each individual, and associate this behavior with the response of the growing cells to mechanical stresses. Via a cell-resolved model accounting for the feedback of collective forces on individual cell growth, we quantify the effect of this mechano-response on the structure and composition of growing bacterial colonies, including the local environment of each cell. Finally, we predict that a mechano-cross-response between competing bacterial strains with distinct growth rates affects their size distributions.

References in corpus (18)

• Classical dynamical density functional theory: from fundamentals to applications
• Topological defects promote layer formation in Myxococcus xanthus colonies
• Derivation of the phase field crystal model for colloidal solidification
• Bacterial growth: a statistical physicist's guide
• Confinement-induced self-organization in growing bacterial colonies
• Phase diagram of two-dimensional hard rods from fundamental mixed measure density functional theory
• Particle-resolved topological defects of smectic colloidal liquid crystals in extreme confinement
• Large-scale orientational order in bacterial colonies during inward growth
• Structural Landscapes in Geometrically Frustrated Smectics
• Mesoscopic Simulations of Active-Nematics
• Trade-offs in phenotypic noise synchronize emergent topology to actively enhance transport in microbial environments
• Microbial Active Matter: A Topological Framework
• Tilt-induced polar order and topological defects in growing bacterial populations
• Microdomains and Stress Distributions in Bacterial Monolayers on Curved Interfaces
• Complex-tensor theory of simple smectics
• Domain walls in vertically vibrated monolayers of cylinders confined in annuli
• Influence of homeostatic mechanisms of bacterial growth and division on structural properties of biofilms. A computer simulation study
• Topology of orientational defects in confined smectic liquid crystals

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Microbes in porous environments: From active interactions to emergent feedback
• Chirality, anisotropic viscosity and elastic anisotropy in three-dimensional active nematic turbulence
• Substrate stiffness modulates bacterial adhesion and diversity of adherent phenotypes across growth stages
• Toward a realistic model of multilayered bacterial colonies
• Internal sites of actuation and activation in thin elastic films and membranes of finite thickness
• Effects of curvature on growing films of microorganisms
• Sensitive particle shape dependence of growth-induced mesoscale nematic structure
• Stress-driven photo-reconfiguration of surface microstructures via vectorial field-guided lithography
• Relevance of the Computational Models of Bacterial Interactions in the simulation of Biofilm Growth