Propagation of engineered cellular properties to colony scales in bacterial populations
type: CreativeWork
description: Biological development is a complex and elegant process that generates the vast array of form and shape found in nature. This process is an example of self-organization, whereby a global pattern of cells is generated by the propagation of local intercellular interactions to larger scales. Understanding this process is one of the fundamental challenges in biology and presents an opportunity to engineer the organization of biological matter. The work described in this thesis has developed a simplified bacterial system to study biological self-organization, focussing on quantifying the influence of physical cellular properties and interactions on global cellular arrangements within colonies. The approach of this project was to use Escherichia coli bacteria, building a range of synthetic genetic tools to generate and regulate cellular properties and interactions, aiming to regulate colony organization. This approach of regulating control over cellular properties within a simplified framework has significant advantages in probing biological self-organization, avoiding the complexity present in natural multicellular systems. A range of microscopy techniques and image processing tools were established to measure cellular properties and cellular arrangements, as well as the dynamics of colony growth. The experimental work was closely integrated with biophysical computational cellular models using the CellModeller multicellular modelling software. In order to regulate cellular organization within colonies, the first objective was to understand the native organization in E. coli colonies. For this, segmentation was performed on whole colonies, as well as time-lapse microscopy of growing colonies to find the spatial pattern of growth. The computational model was informed using this experimental data, setting the properties of single cells, then used in combination with the data to understand the processes driving global cellular arrangements. The results showed that bacterial …
abstract: Biological development is a complex and elegant process that generates the vast array of form and shape found in nature. This process is an example of self-organization, whereby a global pattern of cells is generated by the propagation of local intercellular interactions to larger scales. Understanding this process is one of the fundamental challenges in biology and presents an opportunity to engineer the organization of biological matter. The work described in this thesis has developed a simplified bacterial system to study biological self-organization, focussing on quantifying the influence of physical cellular properties and interactions on global cellular arrangements within colonies. The approach of this project was to use Escherichia coli bacteria, building a range of synthetic genetic tools to generate and regulate cellular properties and interactions, aiming to regulate colony organization. This approach of regulating control over cellular properties within a simplified framework has significant advantages in probing biological self-organization, avoiding the complexity present in natural multicellular systems. A range of microscopy techniques and image processing tools were established to measure cellular properties and cellular arrangements, as well as the dynamics of colony growth. The experimental work was closely integrated with biophysical computational cellular models using the CellModeller multicellular modelling software. In order to regulate cellular organization within colonies, the first objective was to understand the native organization in E. coli colonies. For this, segmentation was performed on whole colonies, as well as time-lapse microscopy of growing colonies to find the spatial pattern of growth. The computational model was informed using this experimental data, setting the properties of single cells, then used in combination with the data to understand the processes driving global cellular arrangements. The results showed that bacterial …
author: Kan, Anton
language: eng
keywords: Biological self-organization, Synthetic biology, Bacterial colonies
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/65fc23cf-cfe4-4f86-a810-fd76b9f99a88/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2017-06-01
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:24Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.101739