Spatial alanine metabolism determines local growth dynamics of Escherichia coli colonies.

ABSTRACT: Bacteria commonly live in spatially structured biofilm assemblages, which are encased by an extracellular matrix. Metabolic activity of the cells inside biofilms causes gradients in local environmental conditions, which leads to the emergence of physiologically differentiated subpopulations. Information about the properties and spatial arrangement of such metabolic subpopulations, as well as their interaction strength and interaction length scales are lacking, even for model systems like Escherichia coli colony biofilms grown on agar-solidified media. Here, we use an unbiased approach, based on temporal and spatial transcriptome and metabolome data acquired during E. coli colony biofilm growth, to study the spatial organization of metabolism. We discovered that alanine displa

SUBMITTER: Diaz-Pascual F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8579308 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature