Figures
A population of photosynthetic cyanobacteria move towards a light source, splitting into groups that exhibit a distinct fingering morphology.
The image shows cyanobacterial cells on a moist surface, moving towards a directed light source. This phototactic behavior results in striking and regularly ordered "fingers" of cell groups. We model this behavior as a biased random walk, which, in combination with cell-mediated surface modification, recapitulates many experimentally observed features. By tuning cellular concentration and light intensity, we show that this behavior follows robust scaling laws and only emerges under certain conditions, and may be a general mechanism for cells to change their group behavior in response to external cues. See Ursell et al.
Image Credit: photo/image attributed to Devaki Bhaya and image overlay to Rosanna Chau and Tristan Ursell.
Citation: (2013) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 9(9) September 2013. PLoS Comput Biol 9(9): ev09.i09. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v09.i09
Published: September 26, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Ursell et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The image shows cyanobacterial cells on a moist surface, moving towards a directed light source. This phototactic behavior results in striking and regularly ordered "fingers" of cell groups. We model this behavior as a biased random walk, which, in combination with cell-mediated surface modification, recapitulates many experimentally observed features. By tuning cellular concentration and light intensity, we show that this behavior follows robust scaling laws and only emerges under certain conditions, and may be a general mechanism for cells to change their group behavior in response to external cues. See Ursell et al.
Image Credit: photo/image attributed to Devaki Bhaya and image overlay to Rosanna Chau and Tristan Ursell.