Herbert Levine
Department of Physics, UCSD,
La Jolla, CA 92093-0319, USA
Research over the past decade has elucidated
many mechanisms whereby physical and chemical
systems can form spatial patterns when driven
far from equilibrium. Remarkably, these concepts
can help us unravel structures that arise
in a biological setting, namely the collective
dynamics of microorganism colonies. Some
examples that have been studied to date include
fractal growth in Bacillus, spot patterns
in E. Coli and chemical wave dynamics and
rotating aggregate formation in Dictyostelium.
This talk will provide an introduction to
some of these systems and explain how one
can use nonequilibrium physics to understand
their behavior.