Disruption of microbial communication yields a two-dimensional percolation transition

Area of Science:

• Microbiology
• Systems Biology
• Biophysics

Background:

• Bacteria coordinate collective behaviors using chemical signals, enabling communication over distances larger than individual cells.
• Mechanisms of signal interference exist in nature, but their impact on macroscale microbial activity remains poorly understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how interference in quorum sensing signal exchange affects microbial coordination over long distances.
• To characterize the transition point where interference suppresses large-scale bacterial communication.

Main Methods:

• Experimental examination of quorum sensing signal exchange with a signal-degrading neighboring strain.
• Development and application of reaction-diffusion models to simulate communication dynamics.
• Analysis of the transition using concepts from two-dimensional percolation theory.

Main Results:

• Increasing interference levels progressively disrupted long-distance bacterial communication.
• A critical level of interference was identified, leading to the suppression of large-scale communication.
• The observed transition was confirmed to be a two-dimensional percolation transition.

Conclusions:

• Physical models, specifically percolation theory, are valuable for understanding emergent behaviors in complex biological networks.
• This study elucidates the robustness of bacterial communication networks and identifies universal quantitative features of signal interference.
• The findings provide insights into how environmental factors can modulate microbial collective behaviors.