Nature Communications (Apr 2019)

Self-organization of swimmers drives long-range fluid transport in bacterial colonies

  • Haoran Xu,
  • Justas Dauparas,
  • Debasish Das,
  • Eric Lauga,
  • Yilin Wu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09818-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

Read online

Motile and non-motile subpopulations often coexist in bacterial communities. Here, Xu et al. show that motile cells in colonies of common flagellated bacteria can self-organize into two adjacent motile rings, driving stable flows of fluid and materials around the colony.