Machine learning the space-time phase diagram of bacterial swarm expansion

ORAL

Abstract

Coordinated dynamics of individual components in active matter are an essential aspect of life. Establishing a comprehensive, causal connection between intercellular and macroscopic behaviors has remained a major challenge due to limitations in data acquisition and analysis techniques suitable for multi-scale dynamics. Here, we combine a high-throughput adaptive microscopy approach with machine learning, to identify key biological and physical mechanisms that determine distinct microscopic and macroscopic collective behavior phases which develop as Bacillus subtilis swarms expand over five orders of magnitude in space. Our experiments and particle-based simulations reveal that the microscopic swarming motility phases are dominated by physical cell-cell interactions. These results provide a unified understanding of bacterial multi-scale behavioral complexity in swarms.

*This research was supported by grants from the Max Planck Society, the Human Frontier Science Program (CDA00084/2015-C), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB 987), and the European Research Council (StG-716734) to Knut Drescher, a James S. McDonnell Foundation Complex Systems Scholar Award and an Edmund F. Kelly Research Award to Jörn Dunkel, and an MIT-Germany MISTI Seed Grant to Knut Drescher and Jörn Dunkel.

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Presenters

  • Hannah Jeckel

    • Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

Authors

  • Hannah Jeckel

    • Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

  • Eric Jelli

    • Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

  • Raimo Hartmann

    • Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

  • Praveen Singh

    • Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

  • Rachel Mok

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Department of Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Jan Frederik Totz

    • Department of Theoretical Physics, Technische Universität Berlin

  • Lucia Vidakovic

    • Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology

  • Bruno Eckhardt

    • Department of Physics, Philipps-University Marburg

  • Jorn Dunkel

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Department of Applied Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Knut Drescher

    • Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology