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Emergent spatiotemporal population dynamics with cell-length control of synthetic microbial consortia

Fig 2

Cell morphology drives consortial population dynamics and strain fixation.

(A) Two-strain ABM simulation snaphots in a 20 x 100 μm trap. Top panel: With equal average cell division lengths (), the consortium exhibited emergent columnar structure and stable strain population fractions in the bulk, as in Fig 1. Bottom panel: A snapshot taken approximately 5 generations (1.5 hours) after the mutant (orange) strain’s average division length was reduced by a factor of a = 0.6 (resulting ). The increased rotational propensity of the smaller-length orange strain led to ejection of the WT (blue) strain by lateral invasion of its columns and subsequent growth-induced cell flow toward the open boundaries. Visible in lower panel are horizontal mutant cells beginning to destabilize adjacent WT columns. (B) Mutant strain fraction increased over time due to columnar invasion of the WT strain. At t ≥ 5 hours (blue line), the mutant strain’s average division length was reduced by factor a = 0.6. Destabilization of the columnar structure of the WT strain led to its eventual extinction in all simulations; grey curves: 20 individual simulations; solid orange curve: mean strain fraction trajectory; dashed curve: Fit of 1 − 0.5e^−α(t−5). Inset: The fit rate parameter α decreased with the length-reduction factor a.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009381.g002