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Cell Death As A Trigger For Morphogenesis, Boris Aguilar, Ahmadreza Ghaffarizadeh, Christopher D. Johnson, Gregory J. Podgorski, Ilya Shmulevich, Nicholas S. Flann

Center for Integrated Biosystems Publications

The complex morphologies observed in many biofilms play a critical role in the survival of these microbial communities. Recently, the formation of wrinkles has been the focus of many studies aimed at finding fundamental information on morphogenesis during development. While the underlying genetic mechanisms of wrinkling are not well-understood, recent discoveries have led to the counterintuitive idea that wrinkle formation is triggered by localized cell death. This work examines the hypothesis that the material properties of a biofilm both power and control wrinkle formation within biofilms in response to localized cell death. Using an agent-based model and a high-performance platform …