Bacterial communities as capitalist economies

摘要

人们对细菌怎样自组织成微型菌落(形成生物膜的第一步)很不了解。在这项研究中，Gerard Wong及其同事采用一个大规模并行细胞跟踪算法来获取每个细胞在一个新表面的定殖过程中的运动历史。%Multicellular communities of single-celled organisms attached to a surface are the predominant form of life on Earth. Development of these biofilms involves distinct stages of self-organization, starting with a single cell that senses and approaches a surface. Numerous factors have been identified that affect the formation, structure, metabolism and regulation of biofilms at the population level, but their formation has rarely been quantitatively investigated at the single-cell level.