Shared biophysical mechanisms determine early biofilm architecture development across different bacterial species

Bacterial biofilms are among the most abundant multicellular structures on Earth and play essential roles in a wide range of ecological, medical, and industrial processes. However, general principles that govern the emergence of biofilm architecture across different species remain unknown. Here, we...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS biology 2022-10, Vol.20 (10), p.e3001846-e3001846
Main Authors: Jeckel, Hannah, Díaz-Pascual, Francisco, Skinner, Dominic J, Song, Boya, Jiménez-Siebert, Eva, Strenger, Kerstin, Jelli, Eric, Vaidya, Sanika, Dunkel, Jörn, Drescher, Knut
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Architecture
Aspect ratio
Biofilms
Biology and Life Sciences
Cell density
Cell interaction
Cell interactions
Computer and Information Sciences
Density
E coli
Escherichia coli - genetics
Extracellular matrix
Flow chambers
Gram-negative bacteria
Growth
Histograms
Medicine and Health Sciences
Microbial mats
Microbiological research
Microscopy
Parameters
Physical Sciences
Principal components analysis
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
Pseudomonas aeruginosa - genetics
Research and Analysis Methods
Species
Statistical analysis
Vibrio cholerae - genetics
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Summary:Bacterial biofilms are among the most abundant multicellular structures on Earth and play essential roles in a wide range of ecological, medical, and industrial processes. However, general principles that govern the emergence of biofilm architecture across different species remain unknown. Here, we combine experiments, simulations, and statistical analysis to identify shared biophysical mechanisms that determine early biofilm architecture development at the single-cell level, for the species Vibrio cholerae, Escherichia coli, Salmonella enterica, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa grown as microcolonies in flow chambers. Our data-driven analysis reveals that despite the many molecular differences between these species, the biofilm architecture differences can be described by only 2 control parameters: cellular aspect ratio and cell density. Further experiments using single-species mutants for which the cell aspect ratio and the cell density are systematically varied, and mechanistic simulations show that tuning these 2 control parameters reproduces biofilm architectures of different species. Altogether, our results show that biofilm microcolony architecture is determined by mechanical cell-cell interactions, which are conserved across different species.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.3001846