Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2024
Monday–Friday, March 4–8, 2024; Minneapolis & Virtual
Session S37: Microbial Communities III
8:00 AM–10:24 AM,
Thursday, March 7, 2024
Room: 103C
Sponsoring
Unit:
DBIO
Chair: Peter Yunker, Georgia Institute of Technology
Abstract: S37.00006 : Liquid channels within B. subtilis biofilms allow the escape of trapped clones and population rescue*
9:24 AM–9:36 AM
Presenter:
Nikhil Krishnan
(University of Cambridge)
Authors:
Nikhil Krishnan
(University of Cambridge)
Joseph Knight
(University of Cambridge)
Abhirup Mookherjee
(University of Cambridge)
Luis A Ruiz Pestana
(University of Miami)
Diana Fusco
(Univ of Cambridge)
We employ an experimental procedure that enables a rapid switch of the chemical environment with minimal physical manipulation of the community to investigate the fate of trapped clones carrying a selective advantage in wrinkly B. subtilis biofilms. We find that these clones are able to use the channels underneath the wrinkles to traverse long distances and take over the expansion front. Moreover, we find that active motility is required to accomplish this task. Collectively, our findings reveal an intriguing novel role of wrinkles in enabling potentially advantageous mutants to propel themselves towards the leading edge of the expansion and rescue the population upon environmental change. Our results also point at motility, which has traditionally received little attention in communities on hard substrates, as a key mechanism for population rescue in biofilms with complex morphologies
*NK acknowledges support from the NIH Loan Repayment program as well as the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. JK acknowledges support from the Cavendish Laboratory Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programme (UROP). LRP, DF, and AM acknowledge support from the HFSP Young Investigators Research Grant RGY0057/2022.
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