Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 5, numbers 3 and 4, 2012 // View article

Modeling and Simulation of Bacterial Self-Organization in Circular Container Along Contact Line as Detected by Bioluminescence Imaging

Authors:
Romas Baronas
Zilvinas Ledas
Remigijus Simkus

Keywords: chemotaxis; reaction-diffusion; pattern formation; simulation; whole-cell biosensor

Abstract:
Mathematical modeling and numerical simulation of quasi-one dimensional spatiotemporal pattern formation along the three phase contact line in the fluid cultures of lux-gene engineered Escherichia coli is investigated in this paper. The numerical simulation is based on a one-dimensional-in-space mathematical model of a bacterial self-organization as detected by quasi-one-dimensional bioluminescence imaging. The pattern formation in a luminous E. coli colony was mathematically modeled by the nonlinear reaction-diffusion-chemotaxis equations. The numerical simulation was carried out using the finite difference technique. Regular oscillations as well as chaotic fluctuations similar to the experimental ones were computationally simulated. The influence of the signal-dependent as well as density-dependent chemotactic sensitivity, the non-local sampling and the diffusion nonlinearity on the pattern formation was investigated. The computational simulations showed that a constant chemotactic sensitivity, a local sampling and a linear diffusion can be applied for modeling the formation of the bioluminescence patterns in a colony of luminous E. coli.

Pages: 154 to 163

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2012. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2012

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x