ArticleThe ISME journal2022
Founder cell configuration drives competitive outcome within colony biofilms.
Article in The ISME journal, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 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.
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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
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- Self-generated hydrogel ejects bacterial cells for localized biofilm dispersion.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Regulatory rewiring drives intraspecies competition in Bacillus subtilis.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Influence of cell-cell distance on the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.The ISME journal · 2026Review
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Biophysics of Bacterial Colonial Structures and the Occupancy of Microecological Spaces.Biology · 2025Review
- Emergent collective alignment gives competitive advantage to longer cells during range expansion.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Biofilm structure as a key factor in antibiotic tolerance: insights from Bacillus subtilis model systems.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Article
- Establishing a quantitative link between crystal violet absorbance and biomass in biofilms.MethodsX · 2025Article
- Disentangling the feedback loops driving spatial patterning in microbial communities.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Review
- Spatial population dynamics of bacterial colonies with social antibiotic resistance.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Fungal hyphae promote bacterial contact-dependent killing during surface-associated growth.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Deciphering microbial spatial organization: insights from synthetic and engineered communities.ISME communications · 2025Review
- Time of first contact determines cooperator success in a three-member microbial consortium.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Tuning interdomain conjugation to enablemSystems · 2024Article
- Genetic mixing and demixing on expanding spherical frontiers.ISME communications · 2024Article
- Bacillus subtilis extracellular protease production incurs a context-dependent cost.Molecular microbiology · 2023Article
- Cooperative microbial interactions drive spatial segregation in porous environments.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The putative role of the epipeptide EpeX inMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Effectiveness of Pseudomonas aeruginosa type VI secretion system relies on toxin potency and type IV pili-dependent interaction.PLoS pathogens · 2023Article
- Mechanisms driving spatial distribution of residents in colony biofilms: an interdisciplinary perspective.Open biology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Bacteria can form dense communities called biofilms, where cells are embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix. Exploiting competitive interactions between strains within the biofilm context can have potential applications in biological, medical, and industrial systems. By combining mathematical modelling with experimental assays, we reveal that spatial structure and competitive dynamics within biofilms are significantly affected by the location and density of the founder cells used to inoculate the biofilm. Using a species-independent theoretical framework describing colony biofilm formation, we show that the observed spatial structure and relative strain biomass in a mature biofilm comprising two isogenic strains can be mapped directly to the geographical distributions of founder cells. Moreover, we define a predictor of competitive outcome that accurately forecasts relative abundance of strains based solely on the founder cells' potential for radial expansion. Consequently, we reveal that variability of competitive outcome in biofilms inoculated at low founder density is a natural consequence of the random positioning of founding cells in the inoculum. Extension of our study to non-isogenic strains that interact through local antagonisms, shows that even for strains with different competition strengths, a race for space remains the dominant mode of competition in low founder density biofilms. Our results, verified by experimental assays using Bacillus subtilis, highlight the importance of spatial dynamics on competitive interactions within biofilms and hence to related applications.
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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.