Intra-colony channel morphology in Escherichia coli biofilms is governed by nutrient availability and substrate stiffness

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Bottura, Beatrice and Rooney, Liam M and Hoskisson, Paul A and McConnell, Gail (2022) Intra-colony channel morphology in Escherichia coli biofilms is governed by nutrient availability and substrate stiffness. Other. bioRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor, New York. (https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.12.17.473116)

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Abstract

Nutrient-transporting channels are found throughout mature Escherichia coli biofilms, however the influence of environmental conditions on intra-colony channel formation is poorly understood. We report the effect of different substrate nutrient concentrations and agar stiffness on the structure and distribution of intra-colony channels in mature E. coli colony biofilms using fluorescence mesoscopy and quantitative image analysis. Intra-colony channel width was observed to increase non-linearly with radial distance from the centre of the biofilm and channels were, on average, 50% wider at the centre of carbon-limited biofilms compared to nitrogen-limited biofilms. Channel density also differed in colonies grown on rich and minimal medium substrates, with the former creating a network of tightly packed channels and the latter leading to well-separated, wider channels with easily identifiable edges. We conclude that intra-colony channel morphology in E. coli biofilms is influenced by both substrate composition and nutrient availability.

ORCID iDs

Bottura, Beatrice ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7114-4384, Rooney, Liam M ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2237-501X, Hoskisson, Paul A ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4332-1640 and McConnell, Gail ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7213-0686;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)