ArticlePLoS biology2007
Self-organization in high-density bacterial colonies: efficient crowd control.
Article in PLoS biology, 2007. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 77 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
77 citing papers in PubMed.
- A minimal mechanically consistent model of smoothly dividing disk-shaped cells.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2026Article
- Nanopatterned Cell Sheet Assembly of Biomimetic Cardiac Laminae for Modeling Structure-Function Relationships.Biomaterials research · 2026Article
- Emergent collective alignment gives competitive advantage to longer cells during range expansion.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Understanding the development of bacterial colony: Physiology, new technology, and modeling.Quantitative biology (Beijing, China) · 2025Review
- Dissecting the physics of bacterial biofilms with agent-based simulations.Current opinion in solid state & materials science · 2025Article
- Growth of nonmotile stress-responsive bacteria in 3D colonies under confining pressure.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Review
- Mechanics limits ecological diversity and promotes heterogeneity in confined bacterial communities.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Interplay between environmental yielding and dynamic forcing modulates bacterial growth.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Microfluidic approaches in microbial ecology.Lab on a chip · 2024Review
- Cell arrangement impacts metabolic activity and antibiotic tolerance inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Soil Protists Can Actively Redistribute Beneficial Bacteria along Medicago truncatula Roots.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2023Article
- Optimization and Fabrication of Multi-Level Microchannels for Long-Term Imaging of Bacterial Growth and Expansion.Micromachines · 2022Article
- Population genetics in microchannels.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Article
- Microfluidic devices for studying bacterial taxis, drug testing and biofilm formation.Microbial biotechnology · 2022Review
- Emergent spatiotemporal population dynamics with cell-length control of synthetic microbial consortia.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Confinement-induced self-organization in growing bacterial colonies.Science advances · 2021Article
- Article
- On Phage Adsorption to Bacterial Chains.Biophysical journal · 2020Article
17 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Colonies of bacterial cells can display complex collective dynamics, frequently culminating in the formation of biofilms and other ordered super-structures. Recent studies suggest that to cope with local environmental challenges, bacterial cells can actively seek out small chambers or cavities and assemble there, engaging in quorum sensing behavior. By using a novel microfluidic device, we showed that within chambers of distinct shapes and sizes allowing continuous cell escape, bacterial colonies can gradually self-organize. The directions of orientation of cells, their growth, and collective motion are mutually correlated and dictated by the chamber walls and locations of chamber exits. The ultimate highly organized steady state is conducive to a more-organized escape of cells from the chambers and increased access of nutrients into and evacuation of waste out of the colonies. Using a computational model, we suggest that the lengths of the cells might be optimized to maximize self-organization while minimizing the potential for stampede-like exit blockage. The self-organization described here may be crucial for the early stage of the organization of high-density bacterial colonies populating small, physically confined growth niches. It suggests that this phenomenon can play a critical role in bacterial biofilm initiation and development of other complex multicellular bacterial super-structures, including those implicated in infectious diseases.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.