News & Views |
Featured
-
-
Article |
The biophysical basis of bacterial colony growth
The growth of a biofilmâa bacterial colony attached to a surfaceâis governed by a trade-off between horizontal and vertical expansion. Now, it is shown that this process significantly depends on the contact angle at the biofilmâs edge.
- Aawaz R. Pokhrel
- , Gabi Steinbach
- & Peter J. Yunker
-
News & Views |
The importance of spatial heterogeneity in disease transmission
Spatial heterogeneity in disease transmission rates and in mixing patterns between regions makes predicting epidemic trajectories hard. Quantifying the mixing rates within and between spatial regions can improve predictions.
- Emily Paige Harvey
- & Dion R. J. OâNeale
-
Article |
Survival dynamics of starving bacteria are determined by ion homeostasis that maintains plasmolysis
When bacteria starve, their cytoplasm detaches from the cell wall. A model now shows that this process determines bacterial death rates and can be controlled to keep bacteria viable in a starved state.
- Severin Schink
- , Mark Polk
- & Markus Basan
-
Article |
Self-organized intracellular twisters
Cytoplasmic flows in the fruit fly oocyte can reorganize cellular components. These structured vortical flows arise through self-organizing dynamics of microtubules, molecular motors and cytoplasm.
- Sayantan Dutta
- , Reza Farhadifar
- & Michael J. Shelley
-
World View |
Strategies for multidisciplinary research
Invest in fostering a culture of collaboration to help break down barriers between disciplines.
- Teresa Sanchis
-
Research Briefing |
Biofilm self-organization arises from active boundary shaping
An approach combining single-cell imaging, agent-based simulations, and continuum mechanics theory is used to observe the effect of environmental stiffness on biofilm development. These measurements indicate that confined biofilms behave as active nematics, in which the internal organization and cell lineage are controlled by the shape and boundary of the biofilm.
-
Article |
Biofilms as self-shaping growing nematics
Confined biofilms can shape themselves and their boundary to modify their internal organisation. This mechanism could inform the development of active materials that control their own geometry.
- Japinder Nijjer
- , Changhao Li
- & Jing Yan
-
-
News & Views |
Bacteria surfing the elastic wave
Elasticity-driven synchronization in active solids has been predicted theoretically and was recently realized in a synthetic system. A biological realization is now demonstrated in a bacterial biofilm.
- Japinder Nijjer
- , Tal Cohen
- & Jing Yan
-
-
Letter |
Macromolecular crowding limits growth under pressure
Rheological measurements combined with a fully calibrated model show that growth-induced pressure increases macromolecular crowding, inhibiting protein expression and cell growth.
- Baptiste Alric
- , Cécile Formosa-Dague
- & Morgan Delarue
-
-
Article |
The effectiveness of backward contact tracing in networks
Contact tracing is key to epidemic control, but network analysis now suggests that whom you infect may not be as pertinent a question as who infected you. Biases due to contact heterogeneity reveal the efficacy of backward over forward tracing.
- Sadamori Kojaku
- , Laurent Hébert-Dufresne
- & Yong-Yeol Ahn
-
-
Comment |
Fixed-time descriptive statistics underestimate extremes of epidemic curve ensembles
The uncertainty associated with epidemic forecasts is often simulated with ensembles of epidemic trajectories based on combinations of parameters. We show that the standard approach for summarizing such ensembles systematically suppresses critical epidemiological information.
- Jonas L. Juul
- , Kaare Græsbøll
- & Sune Lehmann
-
Letter |
Bacteria solve the problem of crowding by moving slowly
Bacteria are able to move as vast, dense collectives. Here the authors show that slow movement is key to this collective behaviour because faster bacteria cause topological defects to collide together and trap cells in place.
- O. J. Meacock
- , A. Doostmohammadi
- & W. M. Durham
-
-
Perspective |
Tail risk of contagious diseases
This Perspective argues that an approach called extreme value theory is appropriate for understanding the so-called tail risk of epidemic outbreaks, in particular by demonstrating that the distribution of fatalities due to epidemic outbreaks over the past 2500 years is fat-tailed and dominated by extreme events.
- Pasquale Cirillo
- & Nassim Nicholas Taleb
-
-
-
News & Views |
A living liquid crystal dissected
A large-scale imaging study has tracked thousands of bacteria living in three-dimensional biofilms. This technical tour de force reveals the importance of mechanical interactions between cells for building local and global structure.
- Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Browse broader subjects
Browse narrower subjects
- Antimicrobials
- Applied microbiology
- Archaea
- Bacteria
- Bacteriology
- Bacteriophages
- Biofilms
- Biogeochemistry
- Cellular microbiology
- Clinical microbiology
- Microbial communities
- CRISPR-Cas systems
- Environmental microbiology
- Fungi
- Industrial microbiology
- Infectious-disease diagnostics
- Microbial genetics
- Parasitology
- Pathogens
- Phage biology
- Policy and public health in microbiology
- Vaccines
- Virology