Diffusion-limited growth in bacterial colony formation

Mitsugu Matsushita and Hiroshi Fujikawa

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1990, vol. 168, issue 1, 498-506

Abstract: Colonies of bacterial species called Bacillus subtilis have been found to grow two-dimensionally and self-similarly on agar plates through diffusion-limited processes in a nutrient concentration field. We obtained a fractal dimension of the colony patterns of D=1.73±0.02, very close to that of the two-dimensional DLA model, and confirmed the existence of the screening effect of protruding main branches against inner ones in a colony, the repulsion between two neighboring colonies and the tendency to grow toward nutrient. These effects are all characteristic of the pattern formation in a Laplacian field. This finding implies the importance of physical properties of the environment for the morphology of bacterial colonies in general.

Date: 1990
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:168:y:1990:i:1:p:498-506

DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(90)90402-E

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