Meso-scale modeling, analysis and simulation of bacterial biofilms

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Bacteria, beneficial or pathogenic, tend to colonise surfaces that are immersed in aqueous environments. The cells attach to the surface, become sessile and produce extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that form a gel-like layer in which the bacteria themselves are embedded. Colony numbers increase by cell division and vivid, highly organised microbial communities (termed biofilms) develop. Bacterial biofilms form wherever environmental conditions are favorable and nutrients are available to sustain microbial life. This ability makes biofilms one of the most successful life forms on earth. Biofilms can benefit engineered systems (mainly in environmental applications such as wastewater treatment, soil remediation, groundwater protection) or can become a threat (e.g, medical, food safety, biofouling, biocorrosion). Despite their name, biofilms do not form in homogeneous layers but they can develop in highly irregular morphologies like  cluster-and-channel architectures. It has been recognized, that besides modern high resolution microscopy techniques, mathematical models and computer simulations are also important tools to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of biofilm processes.The aim of this research program is to develop and analyze such mathematical models and numerical algorithms for bacterial biofilm processes on the meso-scale (the actual biofilm scale, much larger than an individual cell and much smaller than the laboratory reactor) and to study them in computer simulations. This research program involves tools from several classical areas of applied mathematics, such as mathematical biology (in particular population and resource dynamics), analysis and numerical algorithms of nonlinear partial differential equations, continuum mechanics, and computational fluid dynamics. Under a  mathematical aspect, it will make in particular a novel contribution to the analysis of degenerated parabolic systems and their numerical solution.