Here, we investigate the

Here, we investigate the invasion of spatially structured habitats by two separate populations in microscopic detail. Time-lapse fluorescence microscopy of two differentially labeled strains selleckchem of E. coli allows us to resolve dynamics within the interacting populations down to the single cell level. In order to approximate the natural patchy environment of bacteria, we make use of microfabrication to create spatially structured habitats, click here consisting of coupled arrays of habitat patches. We focus on three related questions (i) how are these patchy habitats colonized? (ii) how do the two strains

invading from opposite ends of the landscape interact during the colonization of the habitat? and (iii) how reproducible are the colonization patterns? We found that cells colonize a habitat from opposite sides by a series of traveling waves followed by an expansion front. The populations invading from opposite ends do not mix in the habitat, rather, colonization waves collide and expansion fronts compete for the landscape. We demonstrate that these interactions are mediated by diffusible chemicals. We found that the qualitative features of the colonization patterns are similar

for all experiments, even though population distributions vary widely between experiments. However, when parallel habitats located on the same device are inoculated selleck chemicals llc from the same initial cultures, we observe strikingly similar

population distributions. Results Using microfabrication we created devices consisting of five parallel habitats, each consisting of an array of 85 patches connected by Fludarabine solubility dmso narrow connectors (Figure 1A-C). Habitats are connected to either individual inlets (type 1 devices, Figure 1A), or to a single shared inlet (type 2 devices, Figure 1B) used for inoculation. Unless noted otherwise, two differentially labeled, but otherwise isogenic, strains of E. coli were inoculated at opposite sides of the habitats. We refer to cells and populations of these strains as ‘green’ (strain JEK1036) and ‘red’ (strain JEK1037). The neutrality of the two markers was demonstrated in previous work [42] and verified here by measuring growth in bulk conditions (see Methods and Additional file 1). Figure 1 Colonization of spatially structured synthetic ecosystems. (A) Device of type-1 with 5 parallel habitats (habitats 1 to 5 from top to bottom), each consisting of 85 patches, with separate inlets. Red cells are inoculated on the right (indicated by red inlet holes) and green cells on the left (green inlet holes). (B) Device of type-2 with a single, shared, inlet. Except for the inlet, devices in A and B are identical. (C) Enlarged schematic view of the devices shown in A and B showing an array of patches of 100 × 100 × 5 μm3 linked by connectors of 50 × 5 × 5 μm3.

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