Growth-mediated autochemotactic pattern formation in self-propelling bacteria

Role of Noise-Modulated Self-Propulsion in Driving Spatiotemporal Orders in Active Systems

Fluctuations play a pivotal role in driving spatiotemporal order in active matter systems. In this study, we employ a novel analytical framework to investigate the impact of dichotomous noise on the self-propelling velocity of active particle systems such as polymerizing actin filaments or reproducing elongated bacteria. By incorporating dichotomous fluctuations with Ornstein-Zernike correlations into a continuum-based model, we derive a bifurcation condition in the noise parameter space, revealing a noise-induced instability that drives the emergence of traveling waves. This approach demonstrates how specific noise strengths and correlation times expand the instability region by introducing effective new degrees of freedom that alter the system's stability matrix. Advance numerical simulations, meticulously designed to handle the properties of dichotomous noise, validate these theoretical predictions and reveal excellent agreement. A key finding is the observation of wave-reversal behavior, driven by the sign alternation of the noise-modulated advection term and modulated by the relaxation time. Remarkably, we identify a finite parameter range where this reversal is suppressed, offering new insights into noise-induced bifurcations and spatiotemporal dynamics. Our combined analytical and numerical approach provides a deeper understanding of the role of noise in shaping self-organization and pattern formation in biological and synthetic active systems.

Interplay of cell motility and self-secreted extracellular polymeric substance induced depletion effects on spatial patterning in a growing microbial colony

Reproducing bacteria self-organize to develop patterned biofilms in various conditions. Various factors contribute to the shaping of a multicellular bacterial organization. Here we investigate how motility force and self-secreted extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) influence bacterial cell aggregation, leading to phase-separated colonies using a particle-based/individual-based model. Our findings highlight the critical role of the interplay between motility force and depletion effects in regulating phase separation within a growing colony under far-from-equilibrium conditions. We observe that increased motility force hinders depletion-induced cell aggregation and phase segregation, necessitating a higher depletion effect for highly motile bacteria to undergo phase separation within a growing biofilm. We present a phase diagram illustrating the systematic variation of motility force and repulsive mechanical force, shedding light on the combined contributions of these two factors: self-propulsive motion and aggregation due to the depletion effect, resulting in the presence of small to large bacterial aggregates. Furthermore, our study reveals the dynamic nature of clustering, marked by changes in cluster size over time. Additionally, our findings suggest that differential dispersion among the components can lead to the localization of EPS at the periphery of a growing colony. Our study enhances the understanding of the collective dynamics of motile bacterial cells within a growing colony, particularly in the presence of a self-secreted polymer-driven depletion effect.

A mechanistic understanding of microcolony morphogenesis: coexistence of mobile and sessile aggregates

Most bacteria in the natural environment self-organize into collective phases such as cell clusters, swarms, patterned colonies, or biofilms. Several intrinsic and extrinsic factors, such as growth, motion, and physicochemical interactions, govern the occurrence of different phases and their coexistence. Hence, predicting the conditions under which a collective phase emerges due to individual-level interactions is crucial. Here we develop a particle-based biophysical model of bacterial cells and self-secreted extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) to decipher the interplay of growth, motility-mediated dispersal, and mechanical interactions during microcolony morphogenesis. We show that the microcolony dynamics and architecture significantly vary depending upon the heterogeneous EPS production. In particular, microcolony shows the coexistence of both motile and sessile aggregates rendering a transition towards biofilm formation. We identified that the interplay of differential dispersion and the mechanical interactions among the components of the colony determines the fate of the colony morphology. Our results provide a significant understanding of the mechano-self-regulation during biofilm morphogenesis and open up possibilities of designing experiments to test the predictions.

Interactions in active colloids

The past two decades have seen a remarkable progress in the development of synthetic colloidal agents which are capable of creating directed motion in an unbiased environment at the microscale. These self-propelling particles are often praised for their enormous potential to self-organize into dynamic nonequilibrium structures such as living clusters, synchronized super-rotor structures or self-propelling molecules featuring a complexity which is rarely found outside of the living world. However, the precise mechanisms underlying the formation and dynamics of many of these structures are still barely understood, which is likely to hinge on the gaps in our understanding of how active colloids interact. In particular, besides showing comparatively short-ranged interactions which are well known from passive colloids (Van der Waals, electrostatic etc), active colloids show novel hydrodynamic interactions as well as phoretic and substrate-mediated 'osmotic' cross-interactions which hinge on the action of the phoretic field gradients which are induced by the colloids on other colloids in the system. The present article discusses the complexity and the intriguing properties of these interactions which in general are long-ranged, non-instantaneous, non-pairwise and non-reciprocal and which may serve as key ingredients for the design of future nonequilibrium colloidal materials. Besides providing a brief overview on the state of the art of our understanding of these interactions a key aim of this review is to emphasize open key questions and corresponding open challenges.

Mechanistic underpinning of cell aspect ratio-dependent emergent collective motions in swarming bacteria

Self-propelled bacteria can exhibit a large variety of non-equilibrium self-organized phenomena. Swarming is one such fascinating dynamical scenario where a number of motile individuals group into dynamical clusters and move in synchronized flows and vortices. While precedent investigations into rod-like particles confirm that an increased aspect-ratio promotes alignment and order, recent experimental studies in bacteria Bacillus subtilis show a non-monotonic dependence of the cell-aspect ratio on their swarming motion. Here, by computer simulations of an agent-based model of self-propelled, mechanically interacting, rod-shaped bacteria under overdamped conditions, we explore the collective dynamics of a bacterial swarm subjected to a variety of cell-aspect ratios. When modeled with an identical self-propulsion speed across a diverse range of cell aspect ratios, simulations demonstrate that both shorter and longer bacteria exhibit slow dynamics whereas the fastest speed is obtained at an intermediate aspect ratio. Our investigation highlights that the origin of this observed non-monotonic trend of bacterial speed and vorticity with the cell-aspect ratio is rooted in the cell-size dependence of motility force. The swarming features remain robust for a wide range of surface density of the cells, whereas asymmetry in friction attributes a distinct effect. Our analysis identifies that at an intermediate aspect ratio, an optimum cell size and motility force promote alignment, which reinforces the mechanical interactions among neighboring cells leading to the overall fastest motion. Mechanistic underpinning of the collective motions reveals that it is a joint venture of the short-range repulsive and the size-dependent motility forces, which determines the characteristics of swarming.

Swarm Hunting and Cluster Ejections in Chemically Communicating Active Mixtures

A large variety of microorganisms produce molecules to communicate via complex signaling mechanisms such as quorum sensing and chemotaxis. The biological diversity is enormous, but synthetic inanimate colloidal microswimmers mimic microbiological communication (synthetic chemotaxis) and may be used to explore collective behaviour beyond the one-species limit in simpler setups. In this work we combine particle based and continuum simulations as well as linear stability analyses, and study a physical minimal model of two chemotactic species. We observed a rich phase diagram comprising a “hunting swarm phase”, where both species self-segregate and form swarms, pursuing, or hunting each other, and a “core-shell-cluster phase”, where one species forms a dense cluster, which is surrounded by a (fluctuating) corona of particles from the other species. Once formed, these clusters can dynamically eject their core such that the clusters almost turn inside out. These results exemplify a physical route to collective behaviours in microorganisms and active colloids, which are so-far known to occur only for comparatively large and complex animals like insects or crustaceans.

Synthetic Chemotaxis and Collective Behavior in Active Matter

The ability to navigate in chemical gradients, called chemotaxis, is crucial for the survival of microorganisms. It allows them to find food and to escape from toxins. Many microorganisms can produce the chemicals to which they respond themselves and use chemotaxis for signaling, which can be seen as a basic form of communication, allowing ensembles of microorganisms to coordinate their behavior, for example, during embryogenesis, biofilm formation, or cellular aggregation. For example, Dictyostelium cells use signaling as a survival strategy: when starving, they produce certain chemicals toward which other cells show taxis. This leads to aggregation of the cells resulting in a multicellular aggregate that can sustain long starvation periods. Remarkably, the past decade has led to the development of synthetic microswimmers, which can self-propel through a solvent, analogously to bacteria and other microorganisms. The mechanism underlying the self-propulsion of synthetic microswimmers like camphor boats, droplet swimmers, and in particular autophoretic Janus colloids involves the production of certain chemicals. As we will discuss in this Account, the same chemicals (phoretic fields) involved in the self-propulsion of a (Janus) microswimmer also act on other ones and bias their swimming direction toward (or away from) the producing microswimmer. Synthetic microswimmers therefore provide a synthetic analogue to motile microorganisms interacting by taxis toward (or away from) self-produced chemical fields. In this Account, we review recent progress in the theoretical description of synthetic chemotaxis mainly based on simulations and field theoretical descriptions. We will begin with single motile particles leaving chemical trails behind with which they interact themselves, leading to effects like self-trapping or self-avoidance. Besides these self-interactions, in ensembles of synthetic motile particles each particle also responds to the chemicals produced by other particles, inducing chemical (or phoretic) cross-interactions. When these interactions are attractive, they commonly lead to clusters, even at low particle density. These clusters may either proceed toward macrophase separation, resembling Dictyostelium aggregation, or, as shown very recently, lead to dynamic clusters of self-limited size (dynamic clustering) as seen in experiments in autophoretic Janus colloids. Besides the classical case where chemical interactions are attractive, this Account discusses, as its main focus, repulsive chemical interactions, which can create a new and less known avenue to pattern formation in active systems leading to a variety of pattern, including clusters which are surrounded by shells of chemicals, traveling waves and more complex continuously reshaping patterns. In all these cases "synthetic signalling" can crucially determine the collective behavior of synthetic microswimmer ensembles and can be used as a design principle to create patterns in motile active particles.