Abstract
BackgroundGeographically separated population growth of microbes is a common phenomenon in microbial ecology. Colonies are representative of the morphological characteristics of this structured population growth. Pattern formation by single colonies has been intensively studied, whereas the spatial distribution of colonies is poorly investigated.ResultsThe present study describes a first trial to address the questions of whether and how the spatial distribution of colonies determines the final colony size using the model microorganism Escherichia coli, colonies of which can be grown under well-controlled laboratory conditions. A computational tool for image processing was developed to evaluate colony density, colony size and size variation, and the Voronoi diagram was applied for spatial analysis of colonies with identical space resources. A positive correlation between the final colony size and the Voronoi area was commonly identified, independent of genomic and nutritional differences, which disturbed the colony size and size variation.ConclusionsThis novel finding of a universal correlation between the spatial distribution and colony size not only indicated the fair distribution of spatial resources for monogenetic colonies growing with identical space resources but also indicated that the initial localization of the microbial colonies decided by chance determined the fate of the subsequent population growth. This study provides a valuable example for quantitative analysis of the complex microbial ecosystems by means of experimental ecology.
Highlights
Separated population growth of microbes is a common phenomenon in microbial ecology
Discussion the variation in E. coli colony size could be explained by Voronoi diagrams was previously reported [17], the results here further suggested that such phenomenon could be highly common independent of the media conditions and microbial genotypes
The present study successfully found that such a positive correlation between colony size and Voronoi area appeared to be across the two different media and multiple E. coli strains
Summary
Separated population growth of microbes is a common phenomenon in microbial ecology. Colonies are representative of the morphological characteristics of this structured population growth. As an ancient finding in microorganisms, the colony is the representative morphological characteristic shared by most asexual microbes. Colony formation results in a structured population and is considered a survival strategy allowing bacteria [1] to adapt to environmental changes [2] and to develop resistance to antibiotics [3, 4]. Investigation of microbial colonies is crucial to achieve a fundamental understanding of population growth in microbial ecology [5]. Microbes often inhabit a solid environment [6], which results in a large variation in population size, regardless of the genetic and environmental conditions. As the mechanisms of population growth in liquid are not
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