Microbiology articles within Nature Physics

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  • Article |

    Cytoplasmic flows in the fruit fly oocyte can reorganize cellular components. These structured vortical flows arise through self-organizing dynamics of microtubules, molecular motors and cytoplasm.

    • Sayantan Dutta
    • , Reza Farhadifar
    •  & Michael J. Shelley

  • Research Briefing |

    An approach combining single-cell imaging, agent-based simulations, and continuum mechanics theory is used to observe the effect of environmental stiffness on biofilm development. These measurements indicate that confined biofilms behave as active nematics, in which the internal organization and cell lineage are controlled by the shape and boundary of the biofilm.

  • Article |

    Confined biofilms can shape themselves and their boundary to modify their internal organisation. This mechanism could inform the development of active materials that control their own geometry.

    • Japinder Nijjer
    • , Changhao Li
    •  & Jing Yan

  • News & Views |

    Elasticity-driven synchronization in active solids has been predicted theoretically and was recently realized in a synthetic system. A biological realization is now demonstrated in a bacterial biofilm.

    • Japinder Nijjer
    • , Tal Cohen
    •  & Jing Yan

  • Letter |

    Rheological measurements combined with a fully calibrated model show that growth-induced pressure increases macromolecular crowding, inhibiting protein expression and cell growth.

    • Baptiste Alric
    • , Cécile Formosa-Dague
    •  & Morgan Delarue

  • Article |

    Contact tracing is key to epidemic control, but network analysis now suggests that whom you infect may not be as pertinent a question as who infected you. Biases due to contact heterogeneity reveal the efficacy of backward over forward tracing.

    • Sadamori Kojaku
    • , Laurent Hébert-Dufresne
    •  & Yong-Yeol Ahn

  • Comment |

    The uncertainty associated with epidemic forecasts is often simulated with ensembles of epidemic trajectories based on combinations of parameters. We show that the standard approach for summarizing such ensembles systematically suppresses critical epidemiological information.

    • Jonas L. Juul
    • , Kaare Græsbøll
    •  & Sune Lehmann

  • Letter |

    Bacteria are able to move as vast, dense collectives. Here the authors show that slow movement is key to this collective behaviour because faster bacteria cause topological defects to collide together and trap cells in place.

    • O. J. Meacock
    • , A. Doostmohammadi
    •  & W. M. Durham

  • Perspective |

    This Perspective argues that an approach called extreme value theory is appropriate for understanding the so-called tail risk of epidemic outbreaks, in particular by demonstrating that the distribution of fatalities due to epidemic outbreaks over the past 2500 years is fat-tailed and dominated by extreme events.

    • Pasquale Cirillo
    •  & Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • News & Views |

    A large-scale imaging study has tracked thousands of bacteria living in three-dimensional biofilms. This technical tour de force reveals the importance of mechanical interactions between cells for building local and global structure.

    • Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo

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