Quantifying the fractal complexity of nutrient transport channels in Escherichia coli biofilms under varying cell shape and growth environment
Bottura, Beatrice and Rooney, Liam and Feeney, Morgan and Hoskisson, Paul A. and McConnell, Gail (2024) Quantifying the fractal complexity of nutrient transport channels in Escherichia coli biofilms under varying cell shape and growth environment. Microbiology. ISSN 1465-2080 (In Press) (https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001511)
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Abstract
Recent mesoscopic characterisation of nutrient-transporting channels in E. coli has allowed the identification and measurement of individual channels in whole mature colony biofilms. However, their complexity under different physiological and environmental conditions remains unknown. Analysis of confocal micrographs of colony biofilms formed by cell shape mutants of E. coli shows that channels have a high fractal complexity, regardless of cell phenotype or growth medium. In particular, colony biofilms formed by the mutant strain ΔompR, which has a wide-cell phenotype, have a higher fractal dimension when grown on rich medium than when grown on minimal medium, with channel complexity affected by glucose and agar concentration in the medium. Osmotic stress leads to a dramatic reduction in ΔompR cell size but has a limited effect on channel morphology. This work shows that fractal image analysis is a powerful tool to quantify the effect of phenotypic mutations and growth environment on the morphological complexity of internal E. coli biofilm structures. If applied to a wider range of mutant strains, this approach could help elucidate the genetic determinants of channel formation in E. coli colony biofilms.
ORCID iDs
Bottura, Beatrice ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7114-4384, Rooney, Liam ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2237-501X, Feeney, Morgan, Hoskisson, Paul A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4332-1640 and McConnell, Gail ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7213-0686;-
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Item type: Article ID code: 90835 Dates: DateEvent7 October 2024Published7 October 2024AcceptedSubjects: Medicine > Biomedical engineering. Electronics. Instrumentation
Science > MicrobiologyDepartment: Faculty of Science > Physics
Faculty of Science > Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences
Strategic Research Themes > Health and Wellbeing
Strategic Research Themes > Measurement Science and Enabling TechnologiesDepositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 11 Oct 2024 15:17 Last modified: 11 Oct 2024 16:26 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/90835