ArticleFrontiers in microbiology2015
Water surface tension modulates the swarming mechanics of Bacillus subtilis.
Article in Frontiers in microbiology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Initiation of swarming inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Lipopeptides and antibiotics from a marinemSystems · 2026Article
- Metabolically driven flows enable exponential growth in macroscopic multicellular yeast.Science advances · 2025Article
- Article
- Metabolically-driven flows enable exponential growth in macroscopic multicellular yeast.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Nonkin interactions between Bacillus subtilis soil isolates limit the spread of swarming deficient cheats.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Swarming ofBiophysics reviews · 2023Review
- Review
- Isolation of Potato Endophytes and Screening ofInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Hitchhiking motility ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Molecular and Cell Biological Analysis of SwrB in Bacillus subtilis.Journal of bacteriology · 2021Article
- Article
- Article
- The ecological roles of microbial lipopeptides: Where are we going?Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2021Review
- Biofilm and swarming emergent behaviours controlled through the aid of biophysical understanding and tools.Biochemical Society transactions · 2020Review
- Bacterial surface motility is modulated by colony-scale flow and granular jamming.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2020Article
- Involvement of Heme in Colony Spreading ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2020Article
- Prevention of Surface-Associated Calcium Phosphate by the Pseudomonas syringae Two-Component System CvsSR.Journal of bacteriology · 2019Article
- Learning the space-time phase diagram of bacterial swarm expansion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Collective motion conceals fitness differences in crowded cellular populations.Nature ecology & evolution · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many Bacillus subtilis strains swarm, often forming colonies with tendrils on agar medium. It is known that B. subtilis swarming requires flagella and a biosurfactant, surfactin. In this study, we find that water surface tension plays a role in swarming dynamics. B. subtilis colonies were found to contain water, and when a low amount of surfactin is produced, the water surface tension of the colony restricts expansion, causing bacterial density to rise. The increased density induces a quorum sensing response that leads to heightened production of surfactin, which then weakens water surface tension to allow colony expansion. When the barrier formed by water surface tension is breached at a specific location, a stream of bacteria swarms out of the colony to form a tendril. If a B. subtilis strain produces surfactin at levels that can substantially weaken the overall water surface tension of the colony, water floods the agar surface in a thin layer, within which bacteria swarm and migrate rapidly. This study sheds light on the role of water surface tension in regulating B. subtilis swarming, and provides insight into the mechanisms underlying swarming initiation and tendril formation.
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