Dmitri Volfson

Dmitri Volfson has studied how the growth and physical interactions of cells produce collective organization. He is a co-first author of a 2008 study connecting expansion of dense bacterial colonies with orientational alignment of rod-shaped Escherichia coli.^[ref]

The experiment followed cells growing in a microfluidics-based chemostat. As the population expanded under confinement, its spatial order changed. A continuum mathematical model and simulations of individual interacting cells helped relate the observed alignment to growth, division and mechanical contact.^[ref]

The scientific contribution is a connection between individual growth and a measurable population pattern. A useful original interpretation example is a collection of rods pointing equally in opposite directions along one line: their arrows can cancel in a vector average even though their long axes are aligned. A measure of rod orientation must distinguish this alignment from an isotropic arrangement.

The paper therefore treats a bacterial colony as a physical population whose organization can be compared with a model, as well as a collection of individually functioning cells. Its author-contribution statement credits Volfson with research, analysis and writing.^[ref]