CAREER: Uncovering new rules of multicellular life using synthetic microbial communities

The proposed research aims to develop a set of new methods to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying emergent metabolic coordination and cell-to-cell signaling in biofilms. This proposal has two major strengths. First, it aims to understand the workings of community behaviors that grant benefits to bacterial biofilms, such as community resilience and antibiotic tolerance. Second, it is a timely research area where quantitative models of emergent behavior and cell-to-cell signaling can have biological impact. While microbiologists have long studied gene regulation and metabolism in solitary bacterial cultures and have begun to describe biofilm-level morphology and pattern formation, integrating these two scales has been challenging. By combining quantitative measurement techniques and a tractable model system for multicellular dynamics, the proposed research is therefore poised to uncover new rules of multicellular life.