Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Cates ME
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2900711 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20100524 26
We present a generic mechanism by which reproducing microorganisms, with a diffusivity that depends on the local population density, can form stable patterns. For instance, it is known that a decrease of bacterial motility with density can promote separation into bulk phases of two coexisting densities; this is opposed by the logistic law for birth and death that allows only a single uniform density to be stable. The result of this contest is an arrested nonequilibrium phase separation in which ...[more]