Speaker
Description
Bacteria colonize surfaces to settle sessile colonies called biofilms. Understanding the formation of these biofilm is of crucial interest for industrial processes, in animal health and in biotechnological applications. Rod-shaped bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa have been extensively studied and modeled in-silico using rigid spherocylinders. However, experimental data have shown that bacteria can significantly bend in order to maximize cell-cell interactions in the colony. We develop an individual-based model with bending bacteria composed of a minimal set of heuristic mechanical rules to identify the key factors required to recover realistic structured patterns observed in bacterial populations. With a throughout parameter analysis we investigate the influence of bacteria bending on four-cell array structure, colony elongation, bacterial density, etc. To validate our model assumption we then confront numerical simulations to experimental data.
