ArticleScience advances2025
Morphogenesis of bacterial cables in polymeric environments.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Morphogenesis of bacterial colonies in liquid crystalline environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- 3D coaxial bioprinting of RADA16-I self-assembling peptide hydrogel.Materials today. Bio · 2026Article
- Elasticity promotes directional transport ofSoft matter · 2026Article
- Selective Trapping of Bacteria in Porous Media by Cell Length.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Reversible Bacterial Depletion Aggregation and Restabilization by Water-Soluble Polymers.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2025Article
- Spatial self-organization of confined bacterial suspensions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Form and function in biological filaments: a physicist's review.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2025Review
- Dissecting the physics of bacterial biofilms with agent-based simulations.Current opinion in solid state & materials science · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
- Update of
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Many bacteria live in polymeric fluids, such as mucus, environmental polysaccharides, and extracellular polymers in biofilms. However, laboratory studies typically focus on cells in polymer-free fluids. Here, we show that interactions with polymers shape a fundamental feature of bacterial life-how they proliferate in space in multicellular colonies. Using experiments, we find that when polymer is sufficiently concentrated, cells generically and reversibly form large serpentine "cables" as they proliferate. By combining experiments with biophysical theory and simulations, we demonstrate that this distinctive form of colony morphogenesis arises from an interplay between polymer-induced entropic attraction between neighboring cells and their hindered ability to diffusely separate from each other in a viscous polymer solution. Our work thus reveals a pivotal role of polymers in sculpting proliferating bacterial colonies, with implications for how they interact with hosts and with the natural environment, and uncovers quantitative principles governing colony morphogenesis in such complex environments.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.