Bistable emergence of oscillations in growing Bacillus subtilis biofilms
Abstract
Cell communities can become resilient to stress by undergoing collective growth oscillations, which provide periodic stress relief and are collective in the sense that they arise only for large enough numbers of cells. Collective oscillatory phenomena usually emerge continuously as the system size increases, with oscillations starting with small amplitude and slowly growing as the cells proliferate. This behavior, however, is not appropriate in situations in which the population needs to implement a full-sized response quickly. Our combined theoretical and experimental study shows that collective oscillations in bacterial biofilm communities emerge via a discontinuous transition as their size increases. This behavior may provide an evolutionary advantage to cell communities, by allowing them to quickly alter qualitatively their dynamics in response to variations in external conditions such as stress.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 20, 2018
- Source ID
- 10.1073/pnas.1805004115
Entities
People
- Gürol M Süel
- Jintao Liu
- Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo
- Rosa Martinez-Corral
Organizations
- Departament d'Innovació, Universitats i Empresa, Generalitat de Catalunya
- Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences
- Pompeu Fabra University
- Tsinghua University
- University of California, San Diego