Biofilm streamers cause catastrophic disruption of flow with consequences for environmental and medical systems
Biofilm streamers cause catastrophic disruption of flow with consequences for environmental and medical systems
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1300321110
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发表时间：
2013-03-12
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Stone, Howard A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Drescher, Knut;Shen, Yi;Stone, Howard A.
生物膜是一种耐腐、固着的细菌群落，占据了地球上大多数潮湿的表面，并导致慢性和医疗器械相关的感染。尽管它们的重要性，在共同的生态环境中的生物膜动力学的基本信息是缺乏的。在这里，我们证明了通过土壤样多孔材料，工业过滤器和医疗支架的流动极大地改变了铜绿假单胞菌生物膜的形态，形成3D流光，随着时间的推移，在不均匀的环境中桥接障碍物和角落之间的空间。我们发现，表面附着的生物膜的积累对通过这样的环境的流量几乎没有影响，而生物膜流导致突然和快速的堵塞。我们证明，流动诱导脱落的细胞外基质从表面附着的生物膜产生一个筛状网络，捕获细胞和其他生物质，这增加了现有的网络，导致指数快速堵塞独立的增长。这些结果表明，生物膜流在自然界中是普遍存在的，并强烈影响环境，工业和医疗系统中的多孔材料的流动。
Biofilms are antibiotic-resistant, sessile bacterial communities that occupy most moist surfaces on Earth and cause chronic and medical device-associated infections. Despite their importance, basic information about biofilm dynamics in common ecological environments is lacking. Here, we demonstrate that flow through soil-like porous materials, industrial filters, and medical stents dramatically modifies the morphology of Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms to form 3D streamers, which, over time, bridge the spaces between obstacles and corners in nonuniform environments. We discovered that accumulation of surface-attached biofilm has little effect on flow through such environments, whereas biofilm streamers cause sudden and rapid clogging. We demonstrate that flow-induced shedding of extracellular matrix from surface-attached biofilms generates a sievelike network that captures cells and other biomass, which add to the existing network, causing exponentially fast clogging independent of growth. These results suggest that biofilm streamers are ubiquitous in nature and strongly affect flow through porous materials in environmental, industrial, and medical systems.