Growing Bacteria Line Up Single File, Then Buckle in Liquid Crystals

When scientists study bacteria that are not in a petri dish or a test tube but in environments that more closely mimic their actual microbial home settings, they often find delightfully unexpected behaviors. For Sujit Datta , a professor of chemical engineering, bioengineering, and biophysics at Caltech, those oddities are an invitation to apply physics to exciting new puzzles. The results reveal previously unknown ways in which bacteria organize themselves and interact with their surroundings, and suggest new questions about how the shape of bacterial colonies affects their ability to survive