Coexistence and Pattern Formation in Bacterial Mixtures with Contact-Dependent Killing and
Long-Range Inhibition
Mr. Liyang Xiong
Department of Physics and BioCircuits Institute, UC San Diego
ABSTRACT
Multi-strain microbial communities often exhibit complex spatial organization that emerges due to the interplay of various cooperative and competitive interaction mechanisms. One strong competitive mechanism is contact-dependent neighbor killing, such as that enabled by the type VI secretion system (T6SS). It has been previously shown that contact-dependent killing can result in bistability of bacterial mixtures, so that only one strain survives and displaces the other. However, it remains unclear whether stable coexistence is possible in such mixtures. Using a population dynamics model for a mixture of two bacterial strains, we found that coexistence can be made possible by combining contact-dependent killing with long-range growth inhibition, leading to the formation of various cellular patterns. These patterns emerge in a much broader parameter range than that required for the Turing instability, suggesting this may be a more robust mechanism for pattern formation.
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