Role of metabolic spatiotemporal dynamics in regulating biofilm colony expansion

Significance Oscillatory dynamics commonly arises in a variety of multicellular biological systems. Bacterial colonies exploit such oscillations to control the interplay between growth and resource availability. We model a recent experiment that observes the oscillations of the growth rate during the expansion of a bacterial colony of Bacillus subtilis , elucidating the origin of the oscillations in terms of the spatiotemporal dynamics of the metabolic interactions between cells within the biofilm. Further, different bacterial cell populations are required in this model for the oscillatory behavior to arise, therefore demonstrating they are necessary for the colony survival. This approach provides a platform to model a large class of biological phenomena involving the formation of large aggregates of cells and/or a heterogeneous cell population.