In the new publication Cauliflower shapes of bacterial clusters in the off-lattice Eden model for bacterial growth in a Petri dish Phys. Rev. E. 111, 14406 (2025) by Szymon Kaczmarczyk, Filip Koza, Damian Śnieżek, and Maciej Matyka, employees of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in cooperation with students presented a simulation model of bacterial colony growth in three-dimensional Petri dish geometry.

The study casts a new light on the dependence between the morphology of a colony and the height of the nutrient layer, revealing its fractal nature and transport properties, such as permeability and curvature. The work can be applied in such fields as biotechnology or in research on transport through porous media built on the basis of a new growth model.

The work was done under the grant: NCN Opus LAP 2021/43/I/ST3/00228.

The figure presents growth of the bacterial colony structure on the Petri dish from the work in question.