Bacterial population autowave patterns: spontaneous symmetry bursting

• Published in: Physica. D 1994, Vol.79 (2), p.299-305
• Main Authors: Medvinsky, A.B., Tsyganov, M.A., Karpov, V.A., Kresteva, I.B., Shakhbazian, V.Yu, Ivanitsky, G.R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0167-2789; 1872-8022
• DOI: 10.1016/S0167-2789(05)80010-7

Bacteria are known to form autowave patterns (population waves) like those formed by propagating nerve impulses, phase transitions, concentration waves in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, etc. The formation of bacterial waves is due to the ability of bacteria to drift (through chemotaxis) into the regions with higher attractant concentration. As a result, in contrast to other types of autowaves, bacterial population waves have not only a diffusion component of a bacterial flow but a chemotaxis flow as well. We present the experimental results of the study of spontaneous symmetry loss of bacterial autowave patterns. We show that this phenomenon can be simulated with a simple cellular automata model, and symmetry bursting depends on the parameters characterizing chemotactic sensitivity and motility of the cells forming the population wave. In the experiments in vivo we show that the distortion of a bacterial wave shape can be initiated by bacterial density fluctuations in the parent population that the bacterial waves flake off from.