 |
 |
 |
 |
| |
|
|
|
 Physics graduate student Yilin Wu, doing research in the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Biocomplexity, has brought together physics and biology to find answers to the problem of bacterial swarming. Wu, who is advised by Mark Alber, director of the center, has performed experiments in Holly Goodson’s lab in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry as well as interacting closely with Dale Kaiser at Stanford University, a leading experimentalist studying bacterial swarming.
The studies, focused on Myxobacteria that swarm in soil, attempted to understand the collective motion of millions of cells in high-density environments. Borrowing concepts from statistical mechanics, Wu modeled bacteria cells mathematically and translated the energetics of cell-cell interactions from biology to physical terms, then studied the model with computer simulations. The studies suggest that behavior principles of cells govern the swarming and form coordinated cellular motion. The findings explain longstanding problems such as how swarming bacteria coordinate the collective movement, why Myxobacteria and some others move back and forth at certain periods, and what causes the population-level synergy between the motilities of Myxobacteria.
“Because swarming is essential for the host-colonization of pathogens in human tissues and bio-film formations in medical devices, our studies can help better understand and deal with these health-related issues,” Wu says. “Our studies provide insights into how spontaneous ordering and coordinated motion can emerge in such systems at very high densities via local interactions. The behavioral principles we find governing such processes may also shed light on the traffic regulation and crowd control strategies in engineering.”
The results have been published in Public Library of Science (PLoS): Computational Biology and in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, which was featured in Nature News this year (2009). Researchers are extending the studies on the dynamics of bacterial ordering in a more general physical context. Wu has been selected to give a spotlight talk on the swarming work in the 2008 Q-bio conference in Sante Fe, New Mexico. He also gave a talk at the 35th Annual International Conference on the Biology of Myxobacteria in Napa Valley, Calif.
|
|
|
