ArticleMolecular microbiology2012
Measuring the stiffness of bacterial cells from growth rates in hydrogels of tunable elasticity.
Article in Molecular microbiology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 115 papers.
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Who cites it
115 citing papers in PubMed, 248 citations in OpenAlex.
- Modeling cancer with bacteria-integrated tumor microenvironments using biomaterials: Emerging concepts and opportunities.Materials today. Bio · 2026Review
- Matrix stiffness drives squamous cell carcinoma progression via a Piezo1-mediated mechanotransduction feedback loop.Journal of advanced research · 2026Article
- Selective Covalent Assembly of Gram-Negative Bacteria and Synthetic Polymers into Functional Living Materials.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Target cell cortical tension regulates macrophage trogocytosis.Nature cell biology · 2025Article
- Hydrogel-based experimental models of the gastrointestinal tract.Microbiome · 2025Review
- Modulation of bacterial cell size and growth rate via activation of a cell envelope stress response.mBio · 2025Article
- Bacterial cell widening alters periplasmic size and activates envelope stress responses.The EMBO journal · 2025Article
- E. coli filament buckling modulates Min patterning and cell division.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Microbial Growth: Role of Water Activity and Viscoelasticity of the Cell Compartments.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Organic particle scavenging by marine bacteria: influences of bacterial nanoscale surface properties.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Controlled Release of Microorganisms from Engineered Living Materials.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2025Article
- Stress-mediated growth determinesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Mechanical Comparison ofACS biomaterials science & engineering · 2025Article
- Magnetically Tunable Hydrogel for Biofilm Control.ACS applied bio materials · 2025Article
- Adaptations of Gram-Negative and Gram-Positive Probiotic Bacteria in Engineered Living Materials.ACS biomaterials science & engineering · 2025Article
- Growth of nonmotile stress-responsive bacteria in 3D colonies under confining pressure.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Platelet interaction and performance of antibacterial bioinspired nanostructures passivated with human plasma.Materials today. Bio · 2024Article
- Antimicrobial Biomaterials Based on Physical and Physicochemical Action.Advanced healthcare materials · 2024Review
- Force generation by a cylindrical cell under stationary osmolyte synthesis.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Scaling of stochastic growth and division dynamics: A comparative study of individual rod-shaped cells in the Mother Machine and SChemostat platforms.Molecular biology of the cell · 2024Article
55 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
10 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Although bacterial cells are known to experience large forces from osmotic pressure differences and their local microenvironment, quantitative measurements of the mechanical properties of growing bacterial cells have been limited. We provide an experimental approach and theoretical framework for measuring the mechanical properties of live bacteria. We encapsulated bacteria in agarose with a user-defined stiffness, measured the growth rate of individual cells and fit data to a thin-shell mechanical model to extract the effective longitudinal Young's modulus of the cell envelope of Escherichia coli (50-150 MPa), Bacillus subtilis (100-200 MPa) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (100-200 MPa). Our data provide estimates of cell wall stiffness similar to values obtained via the more labour-intensive technique of atomic force microscopy. To address physiological perturbations that produce changes in cellular mechanical properties, we tested the effect of A22-induced MreB depolymerization on the stiffness of E. coli. The effective longitudinal Young's modulus was not significantly affected by A22 treatment at short time scales, supporting a model in which the interactions between MreB and the cell wall persist on the same time scale as growth. Our technique therefore enables the rapid determination of how changes in genotype and biochemistry affect the mechanical properties of the bacterial envelope.
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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.