Micoorganisms are usually denser than the medium they live in, and therefore have the tendency to sediment. When they’re motile, this might not look like a big problem, but when they are not… well… they need to find a way to stay afloat. How do they do it? We are lucky to have been involved in a very interesting project led by Joseph Christie-Oleza on the sinking behaviour of cyanobacteria. It turns out that pili help cyanos stay afloat! And, surprisingly, help fend off grazers as well. The results have just been published in Nature Communications. Congrats to all and in particular to Joseph!

Absolutely delighted that Iago’s paper on the transition from bacterial swarming to biofilms is now out on eLife.

When the expansion of a B. subtilis swarm is hindered (even just by a simple barrier!) cells at the front pile up through a physical process similar to a traffic jam (a transient one in the movie!). This in turn leads to the emergence of a localised biofilm. This is the first direct report we could find of a transition between swarming and biofilm! Great work by Iago and fab collaboration with Munehiro Asally!

Ah! …here’s eLife‘s press release!