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Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels

The spatial organization of gut microbiota influences both microbial abundances and host-microbe interactions, but the underlying rules relating bacterial dynamics to large-scale structure remain unclear. To this end, we studied experimentally and theoretically the formation of three-dimensional bac...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Schlomann, Brandon H, Parthasarathy, Raghuveer
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8514234/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34490846
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71105
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author Schlomann, Brandon H
Parthasarathy, Raghuveer
author_facet Schlomann, Brandon H
Parthasarathy, Raghuveer
author_sort Schlomann, Brandon H
collection PubMed
description The spatial organization of gut microbiota influences both microbial abundances and host-microbe interactions, but the underlying rules relating bacterial dynamics to large-scale structure remain unclear. To this end, we studied experimentally and theoretically the formation of three-dimensional bacterial clusters, a key parameter controlling susceptibility to intestinal transport and access to the epithelium. Inspired by models of structure formation in soft materials, we sought to understand how the distribution of gut bacterial cluster sizes emerges from bacterial-scale kinetics. Analyzing imaging-derived data on cluster sizes for eight different bacterial strains in the larval zebrafish gut, we find a common family of size distributions that decay approximately as power laws with exponents close to −2, becoming shallower for large clusters in a strain-dependent manner. We show that this type of distribution arises naturally from a Yule-Simons-type process in which bacteria grow within clusters and can escape from them, coupled to an aggregation process that tends to condense the system toward a single massive cluster, reminiscent of gel formation. Together, these results point to the existence of general, biophysical principles governing the spatial organization of the gut microbiome that may be useful for inferring fast-timescale dynamics that are experimentally inaccessible.
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spelling pubmed-85142342021-10-15 Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels Schlomann, Brandon H Parthasarathy, Raghuveer eLife Microbiology and Infectious Disease The spatial organization of gut microbiota influences both microbial abundances and host-microbe interactions, but the underlying rules relating bacterial dynamics to large-scale structure remain unclear. To this end, we studied experimentally and theoretically the formation of three-dimensional bacterial clusters, a key parameter controlling susceptibility to intestinal transport and access to the epithelium. Inspired by models of structure formation in soft materials, we sought to understand how the distribution of gut bacterial cluster sizes emerges from bacterial-scale kinetics. Analyzing imaging-derived data on cluster sizes for eight different bacterial strains in the larval zebrafish gut, we find a common family of size distributions that decay approximately as power laws with exponents close to −2, becoming shallower for large clusters in a strain-dependent manner. We show that this type of distribution arises naturally from a Yule-Simons-type process in which bacteria grow within clusters and can escape from them, coupled to an aggregation process that tends to condense the system toward a single massive cluster, reminiscent of gel formation. Together, these results point to the existence of general, biophysical principles governing the spatial organization of the gut microbiome that may be useful for inferring fast-timescale dynamics that are experimentally inaccessible. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2021-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8514234/ /pubmed/34490846 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71105 Text en © 2021, Schlomann and Parthasarathy https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Schlomann, Brandon H
Parthasarathy, Raghuveer
Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels
title Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels
title_full Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels
title_fullStr Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels
title_full_unstemmed Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels
title_short Gut bacterial aggregates as living gels
title_sort gut bacterial aggregates as living gels
topic Microbiology and Infectious Disease
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8514234/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34490846
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71105
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