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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 1: Dynamic Processes and Pattern Formation

BP 1.3: Vortrag

Montag, 23. März 2009, 11:00–11:15, HÜL 186

Pattern formation in myxobacteria driven by adventurous motility and cell shape — Fernando Peruani^1,2,3, Jörn Starruss³, Vladimir Jakovljevic⁴, Lotte Sogaard-Andersen⁴, •Markus Bär², and Andreas Deutsch³ — ¹ICS Paris, France — ²Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Berlin — ³ZIH, TU Dresden, Dresden — ⁴MPI for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg

Bacteria and other microorganisms exhibit a transition to multicellularity which starts with the onset of clustering. We study the combined effects of active, adventurous motion and anisotropic cell shape in assemblies of a mutant strain of myxobacteria that exhibit neither social motility nor so-called C-signalling. We observe a transition to clustering and collective motion, that is presumably caused by simple physical volume-exclusion interactions only. Our results show that in gliding bacteria, the combination of anisotropic cell shape and active motion, leads to an primitive effective alignment mechanism. The transition to clustering is predicted by a mathematical model and verified by comparison of cluster-size statistics predicted by the model with corresponding statistics taken from experimental data.