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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 27: Fluid Physics 3 - organized by Stephan Weiss and Michael Wilczek (Göttingen)

DY 27.2: Talk

Tuesday, March 23, 2021, 14:30–14:50, DYa

Emergent transport in growing bacterial colonies — •Anupam Sengupta — Physics of Living Matter, Dept. of Physics and Materials Science, University of Luxembourg

Bacteria are known to mediate vital processes in ecology, medicine and industry. Morphology, a key bacterial trait, has been long studied for its biophysical functions. Yet, only recently we have started to uncover the role of morphology in tuning the emergent properties in active cellular micro-environments[1]. Here, I will present recent results that elucidate how non-motile bacteria harness morphology to regulate transport properties over colony scales. We examine the geometric and mechanical properties of growing colonies, with a particular focus on the emergence of topological defects that act as active hydrodynamic sites. Our experimental results indicate that the number of topological defects depends on the cell geometry and colony dimensions, which in turn regulate the emergent transport properties within the bacterial colonies. Our results are supported by MD simulations and continuous modelling [2, 3], suggesting that defect mediated mechanics can potentially lead to biological functions, owing to the active hydrodynamics at scales that are orders of magnitude larger than individual cells. [1] A. Sengupta, Microbial Active Matter: A Topological Perspective, Front. Phys. 8, 184, 2020; [2] You, Pearce, Sengupta, Giomi, Phys. Rev. X. 8 (2018); [3] You, Pearce, Sengupta, Giomi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123 (2019).