Harnessing Escherichia coli motility to engineer bacterial Voronoi patterns

Park, J. H., Boni, E., Hollo, G., Schaerli, Y.

10.64898/2026.08.31.748246 · was preprinted

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Abstract

Cell motility drives spatial pattern formation across diverse biological systems. Here, we engineer Escherichia coli motility in semi-solid agar to control Voronoi patterns in two and three dimensions, partitioning space into regions closest to their respective inoculation seeds. Consistent with our reaction-diffusion model, we observed that collisions between expansion fronts generate either biomass depletion (''gaps'') or accumulation (''anti-gaps''), governed by the relative diffusion rates of bacteria and nutrients. By engineering strains with distinct expansion rates and tuneable motility, and by integrating these experimental data into a dynamic Voronoi model, we achieved precise control over pattern geometry. This enabled the generation of gaps with varying widths, curved boundaries, asymmetric structures, seedless regions, and complex composite patterns. Together, these findings establish bacterial Voronoi patterns as a programmable platform for engineering multicellular spatial organization, with potential applications in synthetic biology and materials science.

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biorxiv v1 2026-09-01 source ↗

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