Understanding the mechanisms that are involved in determining bacterial growth rates is fundamental to infection biology, yet the factors that influence bacterial growth variation on surfaces are largely unknown. In this issue of ACS Nano, Lee et al. track individual bacteria on surfaces for several generations to discover systematic differences in growth rate variation between cells that disperse from surfaces and cells that remain attached to surfaces. These growth rate distributions were shown to be strongly influenced by extracellular motility appendages. We provide a perspective on these results and discuss prospects for future work on the interactions between bacteria and surfaces.
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