How a Biofilm91海角乱伦檚 Strange Shape Emerges From Cellular Geometry | Quanta Magazine
MBL Research Scientist Scott Chimileski contributed a beautiful video of a biofilm growing to this feature article.
Micro decisions can have macro consequences. A soft matter physicist reveals how interactions within simple cellular collectives can lead to emergent physical traits.
Biofilms lead lives of liminality. Just a few cells thick, these layered communities of microbes anchor themselves to solid surfaces at interfaces 91海角乱伦 where rocks meet salt water in tide pools, between plants and dirt in root systems, or on the saliva-covered surface of your teeth. Amalgamations of single cells, biofilms grow and develop into unified life forms that can split back into their component cells under duress. Biofilms, then, are somehow both unicellular and multicellular 91海角乱伦 and simultaneously neither.
Biofilms have emergent properties: traits that appear only when a system of individual items interacts. It was this emergence that attracted the biophysicist to the microbial structures. Trained in soft matter physics 91海角乱伦 the study of materials that can be structurally altered 91海角乱伦 he is interested in understanding how the interactions between individual bacteria result in the higher-order structure of a biofilm.
As cells divide and a biofilm grows, it doesn91海角乱伦檛 simply expand outward. What starts as a flat, smooth layer of cells stretches and pulses. Strange, sticky shapes appear as the bacteria reassemble into ridges and depressions that warp and buckle, almost as if the collective is breathing.
Source: How a Biofilm91海角乱伦檚 Strange Shape Emerges From Cellular Geometry | Quanta Magazine