Interfacial Dynamics in Bacterial Growth Patterns

Biological pattern formation has been extensively studied using reaction-diffusion models. These models are inherently local, however many biological systems are known to exhibit nonlocality. In this talk we will discuss nonlocal pattern forming mechanisms in the context of bacterial colony formation with an emphasis on arrested fronts. This will lead to a nonlocal framework to understand the interfacial motion in biological systems. We will apply our approach to model the evolution of bacterial colonies that inhibit the growth of genetically identical colonies.