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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Myxococcus xanthus is a Gram-negative soil bacteria that has an interesting life cycle. M. Xanthus is a model organism for understanding how multicellular processes occur in bacteria. Our work focuses on the beginning of a colony. Once agar has been inoculated with M. Xanthus, the colony begins to expand radially. This is a cooperative process with cells interacting with one another via physical collisions and slime. We have developed a modified lattice gas cellular automata model of this process. Cells are represented as elongated particles, and interact with a local neighborhood. The expansion rates of wild type cells and that of several mutants were investigated. A comparison of our results with those of experiments will be presented. This model should provide the basis for further investigations of the developmental process of M. Xanthus.