Bacteria in Polymers Form Cables That Grow into Living Gels

It’s fascinating that this could either be beneficial to bacteria, by forming larger bodies and making it more difficult to be attacked by immune systems, or detrimental, by clumping up and then being cleaned up by hairs within the body, such as the lungs. I imagine the answer is both, depending on the context.

I make kombucha* at home and observe something similar whenever I start a new batch using a small piece of culture taken from an old container. Either the yeast or the bacteria - or both in symbiosis - form the typical stringy structures seen in so many petri dishes, that radiate from the "mother" outwards to the edges of the container. As time passes, each area isolated between the crossing strings slowly thickens on the surface and eventually merge with the rest of the growth as a single colony.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha