ArticleBiophysical journal2024
The dynamics of phage predation on a microcolony.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- The gut virome and regulatory T cell axis in health and systemic disease.Microbiome research reports · 2026Review
- Spatial propagation of temperate phages within and among biofilms.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Engineering a non-oxidative glycolysis pathway in escherichia coli for high-level citramalate production.Microbial cell factories · 2024Article
- Competitive advantages of T-even phage lysis inhibition in response to secondary infection.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- The dynamics of phage predation on a microcolony.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Active prophages in coral-associated Halomonas capable of lateral transduction.The ISME journal · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Phage predation is an important factor for controlling the bacterial biomass. At face value, dense microbial habitats are expected to be vulnerable to phage epidemics due to the abundance of fresh hosts immediately next to any infected bacteria. Despite this, the bacterial microcolony is a common habitat for bacteria in nature. Here, we experimentally quantify the fate of microcolonies of Escherichia coli exposed to virulent phage T4. It has been proposed that the outer bacterial layers of the colony will shield the inner layers from the phage invasion and thereby constrain the phage to the colony's surface. We develop a dynamical model that incorporates this shielding mechanism and fit the results with experimental measurements to extract important phage-bacteria interaction parameters. The analysis suggests that, while the shielding mechanism delays phage attack, T4 phage are able to diffuse so deep into the dense bacterial environment that colony-level survival of the bacterial community is challenged.
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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.