Sustainability of spatially distributed bacteria-phage systems

Abstract

Virulent phages can expose their bacterial hosts to devastating epidemics, in principle opening for a complete elimination of their hosts. Although experiments indeed confirm large reduction of susceptible bacteria, there is no reports of complete extinctions. We here address this phenomenon from the perspective of spatial organization of bacteria and how this can influence the final survival of them. By modeling the transient dynamics of bacteria and phages when they are introduced into an environment with finite resources, we quantify how the spatial separation of initial bacterial positions and the self-protection of bacteria growing in spherical colonies favor bacterial survival. This suggest that spatial structures on the millimeter scale plays an important role in maintaining microbial diversity.