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Emergent spatiotemporal population dynamics with cell-length control of synthetic microbial consortia
Fig 3
Single-interface consortial population dynamics and bulk forcing.
(A) Snapshots of two-strain ABM simulation with cell strains seeded in separate halves of the trap. As in Fig 2, we reduced the mean division length of the mutant cells to 
(a = 0.6) after stabilization of the population and emergence of nematic order in the bulk. Snapshots correspond to (top) one generation and (bottom) 10 generations (≈ 3 hours) after induction. (B) Mutant strain fraction time series for 20 ABM simulations. In contrast to the invasion mechanism illustrated in Fig 2, the mutant strain here acted cooperatively by “bulk forcing”: The WT strain bulk population was pushed laterally and ejected out the left, open trap boundary. Grey curves: 20 individual simulations; solid orange curve: mean strain fraction trajectory; dashed curve: fit of 0.5eα(t−5). Inset: the fit parameter α vs. the division length scale parameter, a. (C) Mechanisms of the bulk forcing are revealed by kymographs. Top panel: The order parameter, q, averaged over 1μm columns; Bottom panel: Growth-expansion force, Fk, for each cell was projected horizontally to compute 
, where ϕk is the cell angle from horizontal and the average is taken over cells k in a 1 μm column x.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009381.g003