Lab experiments using liquid cultures or agar plates fail to capture the effects of physical confinement on bacteria. Here, Sreepadmanabh et al. use three-dimensional matrices to show that growth under confinement favours rod-shaped bacteria, which form elongated colonies with increased access to nutrients, as opposed to spherical bacteria that form compact, spherical colonies.
- M Sreepadmanabh
- Meenakshi Ganesh
- Tapomoy Bhattacharjee
