Social interactions in myxobacterial swarming.
Swarming, a collective motion of many thousands of cells, produces colonies that rapidly spread over surfaces. In this paper, we introduce a cell-based model to study how interactions between neighboring cells facilitate swarming. We chose to study Myxococcus xanthus, a species of myxobacteria, because it swarms rapidly and has well-defined cell-cell interactions mediated by type IV pili and by slime trails. The aim of this paper is to test whether the cell contact interactions, which are inherent in pili-based S motility and slime-based A motility, are sufficient to explain the observed expansion of wild-type swarms. The simulations yield a constant rate of swarm expansion, which has been observed experimentally. Also, the model is able to quantify the contributions of S motility and A motility to swarming. Some pathogenic bacteria spread over infected tissue by swarming. The model described here may shed some light on their colonization process.
Wu
Yilin
Y
Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America.
Jiang
Yi
Y
Kaiser
Dale
D
Alber
Mark
M
D001422:Bacterial Adhesion / Q000502:physiology*; D002450:Cell Communication / Q000502:physiology*; D002633:Chemotaxis / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008954:Models, Biological; D009038:Motion; D016940:Myxococcus / Q000502:physiology*