Joseph Larkin

Formation of a swelling gel underlies a morphological transition in Bacillus subtilis biofilms

Microbes across diverse species and environments form biofilms, living materials composed of cells and extracellular polymers. Biofilm-dwelling cells benefit from emergent soft matter physics, which sculpts three-dimensional morphologies and facilitates osmotic nutrient uptake. A...

Colony morphogenesis regulates sporulation dynamics in bacterial biofilms

In multicellular systems, organized phenotypic heterogeneity emerges from the interplay of processes spanning scales from the molecular to the population level. Using Bacillus subtilis , we investigated feedback between the collective process of colony expansion and the distribut...