Speaker
Description
Understanding how spatial structure and environmental variability shape microbial colony growth and inter-strain interactions remains a central challenge in systems biology. I will present an integrated experimental–computational framework for the quantitative analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae colonies on solid media under both standard and non-standard environmental conditions. Experimentally, we developed a scalable workflow combining automated sample preparation, time-lapse imaging, quantitative image analysis, and fluorescence microscopy to extract high-content measurements of colony expansion and spatial organization. Computationally, we introduced a similarity metric to compare colony growth trajectories and infer competitive dominance in mixed colonies, and validated these predictions against fluorescence-based measurements. W developed and parameterized a quantitative agent-based model to reproduce colony size and cell number across perturbations in humidity, nutrient availability, and inoculation geometry. The combined results reveal complex, environment-dependent interaction networks and demonstrate that initial colony spread has a stronger influence on final colony size and cell number than initial cell number. Together, this work establishes a general modelling and data-analysis framework for linking spatial growth dynamics, environmental heterogeneity, and microbial interactions in structured communities.
Bibliography
@article{gaizer_integrative_2024,
title = {Integrative analysis of yeast colony growth},
volume = {7},
issn = {2399-3642},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-024-06218-1},
doi = {10.1038/s42003-024-06218-1},
language = {en},
number = {1},
urldate = {2026-05-11},
journal = {Communications Biology},
author = {Gaizer, Tünde and Juhász, János and Pillér, Bíborka and Szakadáti, Helga and Pongor, Csaba I. and Csikász-Nagy, Attila},
month = apr,
year = {2024},
pages = {511},
}
