Next generation approaches for biofilm research

环境保护意识的增强重新引起了人们对微生物介导的过程的兴趣，这些过程可以恢复受污染的环境，并将废物和其他底物转化为乙醇等增值产品。这些过程中的微生物通常与表面密切相关，细胞在表面生长为生物膜。在自然和工程环境中控制生物膜代谢的因素缺乏信息限制了我们充分利用或管理其活动的能力。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性的惊人增加。我目前的NSERC发现基金使我能够开发研究生物膜形式和功能的新方法，这为从南非搬到瑞尔森的四年中建立一些学术和工业合作提供了一个平台。“发现”计划的目标是开展基础研究，以补充以下三项合作：

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: