THE MECHANICS OF BACTERIAL MICROCOLONY MORPHOGENESIS
BPLAN - Biophysics of Living Active Matter
BPLAN is a Marie Curie-Skłodowska Action project (Horizon2020, proposal number: 840915) written by Dario Dell'Arciprete and Nicolas Desprat.
(Where and Who)
The project is developed at the Physics Laboratory and the Biology Institute of the École Normale Supérieure (LPENS and IBENS) with collaborations at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
(Context)
The growth of a bacterial colony is a fascinating example of a biological process that can be interpreted in physical terms as the interaction of a collection of elementary units - the bacteria - with the surrounding environment and within themselves, whereby energy is harnessed and dissipated, thus determining inherent non-equilibrium conditions.
Although bacterial cells are one of the simplest forms of life, scientists have so far found it difficult to build theoretical models of bacterial growth and morphology as well as to perform controlled experiments of the real systems occurring in nature. These difficulties arise from the naturally occurring conditions that are characterized by a large degree of complexity in both morphological and chemical terms.
(Aim)
The aim of this project is to investigate the biological physics which is at the foundation of the formation of 2D bacterial microcolony, possibly extending such study to the successive development of a 3D structure. The focus of such investigation is placed on the orientational order between the cells - through the study of topological defects - and the adhesion properties of the cells by imaging specific proteins (adhesins) responsible for the way bacteria attach to one another and to the environment.
The experimental results obtained from these studies can be of great relevance for the validation of numerical and theoretical models of bacterial colony morphogenesis and antibiotics exposure.
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This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement 849015
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