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Here are pictures of terracing behavior in Proteus mirabilis showing
four and three inoculations in phase and two inoculations out of phase. Of
interest are time invariances and synchronizations in the formation of the
terraces. For varying concentrations of glucose and agar, the time between
the start of each terrace seems to remain constant, although the width of the
terraces may vary.
Terraces have equal width. A terrace is formed by a swarming phase, in which the
bacteria move out, followed by a consolidation phase in which the colony front ceases movement and the population density in the terrace increases. In addition, inoculations done at the same time synchronize,
while those at differing times do not.
References:
Bruce P. Ayati, A Comparison of the Dynamics of the Structured Cell Population in Virtual and Experimental Proteus mirabilis Swarm Colonies, Applied Numerical Mathematics, accepted, (2007).
Bruce P. Ayati, Modeling the Role of the Cell Cycle in Regulating Proteus
mirabilis Swarm-Colony Development, Applied Mathematics Letters, Vol. 20 (2007), pp. 913-918.
Bruce P. Ayati, A Structured-Population Model of Proteus
mirabilis Swarm-Colony Development, J. Math.
Biol., Vol. 52 (2006), pp. 93-114.
J.A. Shapiro, Thinking about bacterial populations as multicellular
organisms, Ann.
Rev. Microbiol., Vol. 52 (1998), pp. 81-104.
S.E. Esipov and J.A. Shapiro,
Kinetic Model of Proteus mirabilis
Swarm Colony Development, J. Math. Biol.,
Vol. 36 (1998), pp. 249-268.
O. Rauprich et al., Periodic Phenomena in Proteus mirabilis Swarm
Colony Development, J. Bacteriol., Vol. 178 (1996), pp. 6525-6538.
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