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Colonies of bacterium send branches of cells in all directions
Alone in a dish, colonies of the bacterium Paenibacillus dendritiformis will send branches of cells in all directions. But when forced to share a plate of limited nutrients with another colony, the branching patterns of both colonies become lopsided, leaving a space between the two.
[Research performed at the U.S. National Science Foundation-supported Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center, under grants PHY 0216576 and PHY 0225630.]
Learn more in the Eurekalert news story Colonies of bacteria fight for resources with lethal protein. Or read the published study in PNAS, Lethal protein produced in response to competition between sibling bacterial colonies. (Date of Image: 2009) (Date added to Multimedia Gallery: Aug. 5, 2010)
Credit: Eshel Ben-Jacob
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