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Volume 170, Issue 11

Quantifying the fractal complexity of nutrient transport channels in biofilms under varying cell shape and growth environment Open Access

Abstract

Recent mesoscopic characterization of nutrient-transporting channels in has allowed the identification and measurement of individual channels in whole mature colony biofilms. However, their complexity under different physiological and environmental conditions remains unknown. Analysis of confocal micrographs of colony biofilms formed by cell shape mutants of shows that channels have high fractal complexity, regardless of cell phenotype or growth medium. In particular, colony biofilms formed by the mutant strain Δ, which has a wide-cell phenotype, have a higher fractal dimension when grown on rich medium than when grown on minimal medium, with channel complexity affected by glucose and agar concentrations in the medium. Osmotic stress leads to a dramatic reduction in the Δ cell size but has a limited effect on channel morphology. This work shows that fractal image analysis is a powerful tool to quantify the effect of phenotypic mutations and growth environment on the morphological complexity of internal biofilm structures. If applied to a wider range of mutant strains, this approach could help elucidate the genetic determinants of channel formation in colony biofilms.

  • Received:
  • Accepted:
  • Published Online:
Keyword(s): Biofilms , Image analysis and Microscopy
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Royal Academy of Engineering (Award RCSRF2021/11/15)
    • Principle Award Recipient: PaulA. Hoskisson
  • Leverhulme Trust
    • Principle Award Recipient: PaulA. Hoskisson
  • Medical Research Council (Award MR/V011499/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: PaulA. Hoskisson
  • Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Award BB/T001038/1 and BB/T004126/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: PaulA. Hoskisson
  • Leverhulme Trust
    • Principle Award Recipient: GailMcConnell
  • Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Award BB/T011602/1, BB/V019643/1, BBX005178/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: GailMcConnell
  • Medical Research Council (Award MR/K015583/1, MRW030381/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: GailMcConnell
  • Leverhulme Trust
    • Principle Award Recipient: LiamRooney
  • University of Strathclyde (Award Student Excellence Award)
    • Principle Award Recipient: BeatriceBottura
© 2024 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This article was made open access via a Publish and Read agreement between the Microbiology Society and the corresponding author’s institution.
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2024-11-05
2024-12-02
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/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001511
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Quantifying the fractal complexity of nutrient transport channels in Escherichia coli biofilms under varying cell shape and growth environment
Microbiology 170, 001511 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001511
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001511
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001511
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