Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 6: Statistical Physics of Biological Systems 1 (joint session BP/DY)

BP 6.5: Invited Talk

Monday, September 5, 2022, 16:15–16:45, H16

From active bacterial microcolonies to biofilms as model tissues — •Vasily Zaburdaev — Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany — Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin, Erlangen, Germany

Bacterial intrinsic activity is evident on all stages of their life cycle. We will start by following how individual cells deploy forces to attach and move on surfaces. We suggest how these active movements may be harnessed to generate work and, for example, cells can power the rotation of micro-turbines. When let to move and interact, however, bacteria will find each other and form microcolonies that consist of several thousands of cells. Microcolonies are often the functional units of the bacterial existence in natural settings and in the context of disease. We will provide theoretical framework describing the bacterial microcolonies as active viscoelastic materials and discuss how this theory might be useful in eukaryotic systems such as organoids, tumour spheroids or clustering immune cells. Microcolonies may further develop into even more complex bacterial communities known as biofilms - there, bacteria embed themselves in the self-secreted extracellular matrix creating an analogue of multicellular tissues. We will outline some future research avenues deepening this analogy and illustrate it with an intriguing example of wound healing in bacterial biofilms.