Related papers: How do biofilms feel their environment?
The control of biofilm formation is a challenging goal that has not been reached yet in many aspects. One is the role of van der Waals forces and another the importance of mutual interactions between the adsorbing and the adsorbed…
There is significant interest in modelling the mechanics and physics of growth of soft biological systems such as tumors and bacterial biofilms. Solid tumors account for more than 85% of cancer mortality and bacterial biofilms account for a…
Biofilms are complex structures which are inhabited by numerous amount of different species of microorganisms. Due to their ubiquity, they influence human life on an everyday basis. It is therefore important to understand the interactions…
Controlling bacterial surface adhesion and subsequent biofilm formation in fluid systems is crucial for the safety and efficacy of medical and industrial processes. Here, we theoretically examine the transport of bacteria close to surfaces,…
Mechanical stresses stemming from environmental factors are a key determinant of cellular behavior and physiology. Yet, the role of self-induced biomechanical stresses in growing bacterial colonies has remained largely unexplored. Here, we…
To provide insight into the basic properties of emerging structures when bacteria or other microorganisms conquer surfaces, it is crucial to analyze their growth behavior during the formation of thin films. In this regard, many theoretical…
Pentacene is known to grow on isotropic silicon oxide surfaces in a substrate-induced phase with fiber textured crystallites. This growth study reports on the growth of pentacene crystallites on uniaxially oriented surfaces. Silica…
Densely packed, motile bacteria can adopt collective states not seen in conventional, passive materials. These states remain in many ways mysterious, and their physical characterization can aid our understanding of natural bacterial…
Bacteria frequently colonize natural microcavities such as gut crypts, plant apoplasts, and soil pores. Recent studies have shown that the physical structure of these spaces plays a crucial role in shaping the stability and resilience of…
The extracellular matrix of biofilms presents a dense and intricate architecture. Numerous biophysical properties of the matrix surrounding microbial cells contribute to the heterogeneity of biofilms and their functions at the microscale.…
Anaerobic processes (e.g., methanogenesis and fermentation) largely contribute to element cycling and natural contaminant attenuation/mobilization, even in well-oxygenated porous environments, such as shallow aquifers. This paradox is…
The goal of this work is to develop a numerical simulation that accurately captures the biomechanical response of bacterial biofilms and their associated extracellular matrix (ECM). In this, the second of a two-part effort, the primary…
Electrochemical communication is a mechanism that enables intercellular interaction among bacteria within communities. Bacteria achieves synchronization and coordinates collective actions at the population level through the utilization of…
We perform mathematical anaysis of the biofilm development process. A model describing biomass growth is proposed: It arises from coupling three parabolic nonlinear equations: a biomass equation with degenerate and singular diffusion, a…
Biological evolution of a population is governed by the fitness landscape, which is a map from genotype to fitness. However, a fitness landscape depends on the organisms environment, and evolution in changing environments is still poorly…
Immotile microbes inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from soils and sediments to food matrices -- yet how they disperse through these physically confining environments is poorly understood. Here, we show that immotile microbial…
Microbes thrive in diverse porous environments -- from soil and riverbeds to human lungs and cancer tissues -- spanning multiple scales and conditions. Short- to long-term fluctuations in local factors induce spatio-temporal…
Periodic wrinkling of a rigid capping layer on a deformable substrate provides a useful method for templating surface topography for a variety of novel applications. Many experiments have studied wrinkle formation during the compression of…
A number of recent experiments have showed that surfactants can modify the growth mode of an epitaxial film, suppressing islanding and promoting layer-by-layer growth. Here a set of coupled equations are introduced to describe the coupling…
This fluid dynamics video presents three-dimensional kinetic simulations of the dynamics in suspensions of oxytactic bacteria confined in thin liquid film surrounded by air. At the initial time, the bacterial concentration is uniform and…