Using Functional Gels and Surfaces to Understand and Control Microbial Activities

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Microbes (bacteria and fungi) attach and reside on a wide range of materials through their ability to change their surface molecules, and to form a film that hosts a community of microorganisms. Understanding the interactions among microbes and surfaces will allow for control of the attachment and adhesion of microbes on surfaces, with the potential to bring new insight into mechanisms for defeating unwanted film growth. This award supports the development of materials and surfaces with chemistries that can be controlled at the resolution of molecular bindings, by first understanding the chemical processes responsible for the adhesion. This approach integrates organic chemistry, materials science, and microbial biology, to achieve a common goal of understanding and controlling microbial activities. The results can be used to help control and defeat undesirable surface films, and to identify potential microbial surface molecules for drug development for infectious diseases. To adapt and reside on different man-made or animal host surfaces, microbes carry out phase variations to change their surface molecules, and alter their activity to form biofilms. To understand these complex biology-surface interactions with a temporal and spatial control, this research will include synthesis of bioinert hydrogels with a wide range of porous structures that present only active ligands on the surfaces. The background of the gel will be engineered to prevent all unwanted molecular interactions from the microbes (bacteria and fungi), and thus isolating the specific binding events to the ligand presented on the surface. This biocompatible materials approach will allow unambiguous identification of (i) whether the ligand-receptor binding can trigger a specific microbial activity, and (ii) whether a molecule can block a specific microbial activity, and will also separate and isolate different types of stains or phenotypes from a mixture of bacteria.