{"doi":"10.7554/elife.48885","title":"Flower-like patterns in multi-species bacterial colonies","abstract":"Diverse interactions among species within bacterial colonies lead to intricate spatiotemporal dynamics, which can affect their growth and survival. Here, we describe the emergence of complex structures in a colony grown from mixtures of motile and non-motile bacterial species on a soft agar surface. Time-lapse imaging shows that non-motile bacteria 'hitchhike' on the motile bacteria as the latter migrate outward. The non-motile bacteria accumulate at the boundary of the colony and trigger an instability that leaves behind striking flower-like patterns. The mechanism of the front instability governing this pattern formation is elucidated by a mathematical model for the frictional motion of the colony interface, with friction depending on the local concentration of the non-motile species. A more elaborate two-dimensional phase-field model that explicitly accounts for the interplay between growth, mechanical stress from the motile species, and friction provided by the non-motile species, fully reproduces the observed flower-like patterns.","journal":"eLife","year":2020,"id":56383,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":85,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9529,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":292739,"name":"Yuansheng Cao","orcid":"0000-0002-6857-6044","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292740,"name":"Robert Cooper","orcid":"0000-0003-2136-0403","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292741,"name":"Wouter‐Jan Rappel","orcid":"0000-0003-3833-7197","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":293818,"name":"Jeff Hasty","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292742,"name":"Lev S. Tsimring","orcid":"0000-0003-0709-3548","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292738,"name":"Liyang Xiong","orcid":"0000-0002-3257-7643","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":63,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:05:49.581291Z","pmid":"31933477","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}