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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 9: Statistical physics in biological systems

DY 9.3: Vortrag

Montag, 26. März 2007, 17:00–17:15, H3

Pattern Formation and Collective Motion in Bacterial Colonies — •Pawel Romanczuk¹, Udo Erdmann², Harald Engel³, and Lutz Schimansky-Geier¹ — ¹Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Newtonstr. 15, 12489 Berlin — ²Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Str. 2, 10178 Berlin — ³Technische Universität Berlin, Hardenbergstr. 36, 10623 Berlin

Complex spatio-temporal patterns of cell clusters were observed in colonies of chemotactic bacteria such as Escherichia coli or Sallmonella typhimurium [1]. The production of a potent chemoattractor by the bacteria themselves as a reaction to certain nutrients is the essential factor for this pattern formation. Additional collective dynamics, such as collective translocation and rotation of bacterial clusters were reported from experiments on bacterial colonies.

We are able to reproduce the macroscopic behaviour, as well as the collective types of motion using Active Brownian particles including chemotaxis and velocity alignment.

We compare analytical results for macroscopic pattern formation obtained from the overdamped limit approximation with numerical simulations and discuss the collective dynamics of our model. Further on we propose a simple explanation for the occurrence of different collective types of motion in bacterial colonies.

[1] Budrene, E. O. und H. C. Berg: Dynamics of formation of symmetrical patterns by chemotactic bacteria. Nature, 376:49-53, 1995.