Highlights•Microbial interactions and system function are two ways to study
communities.•Natural microbial communities are difficult to define and to study.•Synthetic …

Bacterial growth presents many beautiful phenomena that pose new theoretical challenges
to statistical physicists, and are also amenable to laboratory experimentation. This review …

Microbial communities mediate crucial biogeochemical, biomedical and biotechnological
processes, yet our understanding of their assembly, and our ability to control its outcome …

We studied in detail the reproducibility of community development in replicate nutrient‐
cycling microbial microcosms that were set up identically and allowed to develop under the …

Cooperative behavior, the costly provision of benefits to others, is common across all
domains of life. This review article discusses cooperative behavior in the microbial world …

To explore the coupling between a growing population of microorganisms such as E. coli
and a nonuniform nutrient distribution, we formulate a minimalistic model. It consists of active …

The exchange of diffusive metabolites is known to control the spatial patterns formed by
microbial populations, as revealed by recent studies in the laboratory. However, the matrices …

To explore the coupling between a growing population of motile microorganisms such as E.
coli and a nonuniform nutrient distribution, we formulate a minimalistic model. It consists of …

The growth of microbial populations catalyzing biochemical reactions leads to positive
feedback loops and self-amplifying process dynamics at ecosystem scales. Hence, the state …

Spatial oscillations in soil contaminant concentration profiles are sometimes observed, but
rarely commented on, or are attributed to noisy data. In this paper we consider a possible …