ArticlePhysical biology2022
Growth instabilities shape morphology and genetic diversity of microbial colonies.
Article in Physical biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Transition from traveling fronts to diffusion-limited growth in expanding populations.Physical review. E · 2026Article
- Article
- Biophysical metabolic modeling of complex bacterial colony morphology.Cell systems · 2025Article
- The biophysical basis of bacterial colony growth.Nature physics · 2024Article
- Integrative analysis of yeast colony growth.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Interplay between morphology and competition in two-dimensional colony expansion.Physical review. E · 2023Article
- Proliferating active matter.Nature reviews. Physics · 2023Review
- Morphological instability and roughening of growing 3D bacterial colonies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Cellular populations assume an incredible variety of shapes ranging from circular molds to irregular tumors. While we understand many of the mechanisms responsible for these spatial patterns, little is known about how the shape of a population influences its ecology and evolution. Here, we investigate this relationship in the context of microbial colonies grown on hard agar plates. This a well-studied system that exhibits a transition from smooth circular disks to more irregular and rugged shapes as either the nutrient concentration or cellular motility is decreased. Starting from a mechanistic model of colony growth, we identify two dimensionless quantities that determine how morphology and genetic diversity of the population depend on the model parameters. Our simulations further reveal that population dynamics cannot be accurately described by the commonly-used surface growth models. Instead, one has to explicitly account for the emergent growth instabilities and demographic fluctuations. Overall, our work links together environmental conditions, colony morphology, and evolution. This link is essential for a rational design of concrete, biophysical perturbations to steer evolution in the desired direction.
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