Related papers: Biofilm Growth Under Elastic Confinement
During development, organisms acquire three-dimensional shapes with important physiological consequences. While the basic mechanisms underlying morphogenesis are known in eukaryotes, it is often difficult to manipulate them in vivo. To…
Biological active materials such as bacterial biofilms and eukaryotic cells thrive in confined micro-spaces. Here, we show through numerical simulations that confinement can serve as a mechanical guidance to achieve distinct modes of…
Microscopic organisms, such as bacteria, have the ability of colonizing surfaces and developing biofilms that can determine diseases and infections. Most bacteria secrete a significant amount of extracellular polymer substances that are…
Biofilms are communities of microorganisms that grow on virtually all surfaces with sufficient nutrients including aquatic and industrial water systems and medical devices. Biofilms are complex, structured communities where the interplay of…
The dynamics of cellular aggregates is driven by the interplay of mechanochemical processes and cellular activity. Although deterministic models may capture mechanical features, local chemical fluctuations trigger random cell responses,…
Growing tissue and bacterial colonies are active matter systems where cell divisions and cellular motion generate active stress. Although they operate in the non-equilibrium regime, these biological systems can form large-scale ordered…
Certain bacteria form filamentous colonies when the cells fail to separate after dividing. In Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus thermus, and cyanobacteria, the filaments can wrap into complex supercoiled structures as the cells grow. The…
We propose a model of antibiotic diffusion through a bacterial biofilm when diffusion and/or absorption barriers develop in the biofilm. The idea of this model is: We deduce details of the diffusion process in a medium in which direct…
The formation of mounded surfaces in epitaxial growth is attributed to the presence of barriers against interlayer diffusion in the terrace edges, known as Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barriers. We investigate a model for epitaxial growth using a…
Bacteria invade surfaces by forming dense colonies encased in a polymer matrix. Successful settlement of founder bacteria, early microcolony development and later macroscopic spreading of these biofilms on surfaces rely on complex physical…
The formation of bacterial biofilms on solid surfaces within a fluid starts when bacteria attach to the substrate. Understanding environmental factors affecting the attachment and the early stages of the biofilm development as well as the…
In this paper we derive a pore-scale model for permeable biofilm formation in a two-dimensional pore. The pore is divided in two phases: water and biofilm. The biofilm is assumed to consist of four components: water, extracellular polymeric…
A dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model for the quantitative simulation of biofilm growth controlled by substrate (nutrient) consumption, advective and diffusive substrate transport, and hydrodynamic interactions with fluid flow…
Many bacterial species readily develop biofilms that act as a protective matrix against external challenge, e.g. from antimicrobial treatment. Therefore, biofilms are often responsible for persistent and recurring infections. Established…
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…
Culturing cells confined in microscale geometries has been reported in many studies this last decade, in particular following the development of microfluidic-based applications and lab-on-a-chip devices. Such studies usually examine growth…
Microfiltration technology is a widely used engineering strategy for fresh water production and water treatment. The major concern in many applications is the formation of a biological fouling layer leading to increased hydraulic resistance…
Several bacteria and bacteria strands form biofilms in different environmental conditions, e.g. pH, temperature, nutrients, etc. Biofilm growth, therefore, is an extremely robust process. Because of this, while biofilm growth is a complex…
Bacillus subtilis biofilms were grown in laminar channel flow at wall shear stress spanning one order of magnitude ($\tau_w = 0.068$ Pa to $\tau_w = 0.67$ Pa). We monitor, non-invasively, the evolution of the three-dimensional distribution…
Bacteria build multicellular communities termed biofilms, which are often encased in a self-secreted extracellular matrix that gives the community mechanical strength and protection against harsh chemicals. How bacteria assemble distinct…