Next generation approaches for biofilm research

环境保护意识的增强重新引起了人们对利用微生物修复受污染的环境并将废物和其他底物转化为乙醇等增值产品的兴趣。这些过程中的微生物通常与表面密切相关，在那里细胞以生物膜的形式生长。缺乏关于控制生物膜在自然和工程环境中代谢的因素的信息限制了我们充分开发或管理它们的活动的能力。同样，我们在临床环境中无法控制生物膜的存活和增殖，导致医院获得性感染和多重耐药的惊人增加。我目前的NSERC发现基金使我能够开发新的方法来研究生物膜的形式和功能，这为从南非搬到Ryerson后的四年里建立了许多学术和产业合作提供了平台。拟议的探索基金的目标是开展基础研究，作为其中三项合作的补充：

Intensified awareness of environmental protection has renewed interest in microbially-mediated processes for restoring contaminated environments and converting waste and other substrates into value-added products such as ethanol. Microbes in these processes are often in close association with surfaces, where the cells grow as biofilms. A lack of information about the factors controlling metabolism of biofilms in natural and engineered environments limits our ability to fully exploit or manage their activity. Similarly, our inability to control biofilm survival and proliferation in clinical settings has resulted in an alarming increase in hospital-acquired infections and multi-drug resistance. My current NSERC Discovery grant has enabled me to develop novel approaches to study biofilm form and function, which provided a platform for establishing a number of academic and industrial collaborations during the four years since moving to Ryerson from South Africa. The goal of the proposed Discovery grant is to conduct fundamental research complementary to three of these collaborations: