Architectural transitions in Vibrio cholerae biofilms at single-cell resolution

Significance Bacterial biofilms are ubiquitous in the environment and serve beneficial roles in microbiota communities in the context of eukaryotic hosts and in industrial applications, yet biofilms of pathogenic bacteria can also cause devastating infections. Biofilm architectures are usually studied at a coarse morphological level, and consequently, little is known about the internal biofilm architecture and how it emerges. Here, we use an optical imaging technique to visualize every cell inside thousands of Vibrio cholerae biofilms to discover architectural transitions and the major phases of V. cholerae biofilm growth.