ArticleCell systems2018
Signal Percolation within a Bacterial Community.
Article in Cell systems, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers.
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Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Spontaneous switching in a protein signalling array reveals near-critical cooperativity.Nature physics · 2026Article
- Rules of life at the interface of calcium signaling and mechanobiology.APL bioengineering · 2025Review
- An agent-based model of metabolic signaling oscillations in Bacillus subtilis biofilms.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Physical communication pathways in bacteria: an extra layer to quorum sensing.Biophysical reviews · 2025Review
- Mesoscale heterogeneity is a critical determinant for spiral pattern formation in developing social amoeba.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Photocontrol of bacterial membrane potential regulates antibiotic persistence inEuropean physical journal plus · 2025Article
- Open problems in synthetic multicellularity.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2024Article
- Bioelectronic Drug-free Control of Opportunistic Pathogens through Selective Excitability.Device · 2024Article
- Deconstructing synthetic biology across scales: a conceptual approach for training synthetic biologists.Nature communications · 2024Review
- Synthetic microbiology in sustainability applications.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2024Review
- Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates.Communications biology · 2024Review
- Active pH regulation facilitatesmBio · 2024Article
- Spatial biology of Ising-like synthetic genetic networks.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Planetary Scale Information Transmission in the Biosphere and Technosphere: Limits and Evolution.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Cell-autonomous diversification in bacteria arises from calcium dynamics self-organizing at a critical point.Science advances · 2023Article
- Aqueous habitats and carbon inputs shape the microscale geography and interaction ranges of soil bacteria.Communications biology · 2023Article
- There's Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-Scale Machines.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Living electronics: A catalogue of engineered living electronic components.Microbial biotechnology · 2023Review
- Membrane Targeted Azobenzene Drives Optical Modulation of Bacterial Membrane Potential.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Signal transmission among cells enables long-range coordination in biological systems. However, the scarcity of quantitative measurements hinders the development of theories that relate signal propagation to cellular heterogeneity and spatial organization. We address this problem in a bacterial community that employs electrochemical cell-to-cell communication. We developed a model based on percolation theory, which describes how signals propagate through a heterogeneous medium. Our model predicts that signal transmission becomes possible when the community is organized near a critical phase transition between a disconnected and a fully connected conduit of signaling cells. By measuring population-level signal transmission with single-cell resolution in wild-type and genetically modified communities, we confirm that the spatial distribution of signaling cells is organized at the predicted phase transition. Our findings suggest that at this critical point, the population-level benefit of signal transmission outweighs the single-cell level cost. The bacterial community thus appears to be organized according to a theoretically predicted spatial heterogeneity that promotes efficient signal transmission.
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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.