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Updated: May 29, 2026

Monitoring Spatial Segregation in Surface Colonizing Microbial Populations
Published on: October 29, 2016
Theory of cooperation in a micro-organismal snowdrift game
Zhenyu Wang1, Nigel Goldenfeld
1Department of Physics, Center for the Physics of Living Cells and Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Loomis Laboratory of Physics, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Abstract:
We present a mean-field model for the phase diagram of a community of micro-organisms, interacting through their metabolism so that they are, in effect, engaging in a cooperative social game. We show that as a function of the concentration of the nutrients glucose and histidine, the community undergoes a phase transition separating a state in which one strain is dominant to a state which is characterized by coexisting populations. Our results are in good agreement with recent experimental results, correctly reproducing quantitative trends and predicting the phase diagram.
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