Phys.org August 29, 2022
Observable characteristics—phenotypes—at the cellular scale underpins homeostasis and the fitness of living systems. However, how they shape properties at the population level remains poorly understood. An international team of researchers (Luxembourg, the Netherlands) found that phenotypic noise self-regulates with growth and coordinates collective structural organization, the kinetics of topological defects and the emergence of active transport around confluent colonies. They cataloged key phenotypic traits in bacteria growing under diverse conditions. The results revealed a statistically precise critical time for the transition from a monolayer biofilm to a multilayer biofilm, despite the strong noise in the cell geometry and the colony area at the onset of the transition. This revealed a mitigation mechanism between the noise in the cell geometry and the growth rate that dictates the narrow critical time window. By uncovering how rectification of phenotypic noise homogenizes correlated collective properties across colonies, revealed an emergent strategy that confluent systems employ to tune active transport, buffering inherent heterogeneities associated with natural cellular environment settings…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
From noisy phenotypes to a statistically precise mono-to-multilayer transition event. Credit: Nature Physics volume 18, pages945–951 (2022)Â