ArticleNature communications2021
Droplet printing reveals the importance of micron-scale structure for bacterial ecology.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
What it found
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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.
The trial behind it
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
47 citing papers in PubMed, 85 citations in OpenAlex.
- Bacterial weaponry and the ecological factors of competitive success.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- It takes a village: how plant-associated bacterial communities socialise to shape plant growth and health.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Interspecies quorum sensing signals modulate multicellular organization and enhance contact-dependent antagonism in Vibrio cholerae.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Controlling spatial structure in minimal microbial communities by sequential capillary assembly.Lab on a chip · 2026Article
- Multi-Material Droplet-Based Hydrogel Threads for Extrusion 3D Printing.Small methods · 2026Article
- Liquid-in-Liquid Prints: High-Density Biochemically Encoded Information Preserved in Microdroplet Arrays.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2026Article
- Influence of cell-cell distance on the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Carbon substrate type shapes spatial self-organization in a multi-species biofilm community.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- A microbiologist's field guide to community ecology.ISME communications · 2026Review
- Passive Membrane Transport Analysis of Drug Mixtures.Analytical chemistry · 2025Article
- Type VI secretion system activity at lethal antibiotic concentrations leads to overestimation of weapon potency.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2025Article
- High-Resolution Patterned Delivery of Chemical Signals From 3D-Printed Picoliter Droplet Networks.Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) · 2025Article
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- 3D Microtumors Representing Ovarian Cancer Minimal Residual Disease Respond to the Fatty Acid Oxidation Inhibitor Perhexiline.Advanced healthcare materials · 2025Article
- Microfluidic Production of Spatially Structured Biomimetic Microgels as Compartmentalized Artificial Cells.Small science · 2025Article
- Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Review
- Article
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- Higher-order interactions and emergent properties of microbial communities: The power of synthetic ecology.Heliyon · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Bacteria often live in diverse communities where the spatial arrangement of strains and species is considered critical for their ecology. However, a test of this hypothesis requires manipulation at the fine scales at which spatial structure naturally occurs. Here we develop a droplet-based printing method to arrange bacterial genotypes across a sub-millimetre array. We print strains of the gut bacterium Escherichia coli that naturally compete with one another using protein toxins. Our experiments reveal that toxin-producing strains largely eliminate susceptible non-producers when genotypes are well-mixed. However, printing strains side-by-side creates an ecological refuge where susceptible strains can persist in large numbers. Moving to competitions between toxin producers reveals that spatial structure can make the difference between one strain winning and mutual destruction. Finally, we print different potential barriers between competing strains to understand how ecological refuges form, which shows that cells closest to a toxin producer mop up the toxin and protect their clonemates. Our work provides a method to generate customised bacterial communities with defined spatial distributions, and reveals that micron-scale changes in these distributions can drive major shifts in ecology.
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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.