Self-enhanced mobility enables vortex pattern formation in living matter

Abstract: Emergence of regular spatial patterns is a hallmark in living matter ranging from subcellular organelles to developing embryos and to ecosystems. Mechanisms for the formation of ordered spatial patterns in biology often require chemical signaling that coordinates cellular behavior and differentiation. Here we discovered a novel route to large-scale regular pattern formation in living matter mediated by purely physical interactions. We found that dense bacterial living matter spontaneously developed an ordered lattice of mesoscale, fast-spinning vortices each consisting of ~10^4-10^5 motile cells; these mesoscale vortices were arranged in space over centimeter scale with apparent hexagonal order, while individual cells in the vortices moved in coordinated directions with strong polar and vortical order. Single-cell tracking and numerical simulations suggest that the phenomenon is enabled by self-enhanced mobility of individual cells in the system. Our findings demonstrate a simple physical mechanism for self-organized pattern formation in living systems and more generally, in other active matter systems near the boundary of fluidlike and solidlike behaviors.