Social bacteria build survival shelters using the physics of fingerprints (IMAGE)
Caption
When food is scarce, members of a species of forest-dwelling bacteria come together to build structures called fruiting bodies to survive until food becomes more available. Princeton researchers have identified how these bacteria harness the same physical laws that lead to the whorls of a fingerprint to build the structures, which consist of the bacterial cells themselves and secretions that glue the edifice together. The structures are about a tenth of a millimeter high, or tens to hundreds of times taller than a single bacterial cell. On the human scale, this size compares to the height of a skyscraper.
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Image credit: Cassidy Yang, Princeton University
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Image credit: Cassidy Yang, Princeton University
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