Using Functional Gels and Surfaces to Understand and Control Microbial Activities

微生物(细菌和真菌)通过改变其表面分子的能力附着并居住在各种材料上，并形成一层容纳微生物群落的薄膜。了解微生物与表面之间的相互作用将允许控制微生物在表面的附着和黏附，并有可能为击败不想要的薄膜生长的机制带来新的见解。该奖项支持开发具有化学成分的材料和表面，通过首先了解导致粘合的化学过程，可以在分子结合的分辨率下进行控制。这种方法集成了有机化学、材料科学和微生物生物学，以实现了解和控制微生物活动的共同目标。这些结果可以用来帮助控制和击败不受欢迎的表面膜，并识别潜在的微生物表面分子，用于治疗传染病的药物开发。为了适应和居住在不同的人造或动物宿主表面，微生物进行相变来改变它们的表面分子，并改变它们的活动以形成生物膜。为了了解这些复杂的生物-表面相互作用的时间和空间控制，这项研究将包括合成具有广泛的多孔结构的生物惰性水凝胶，这些结构只在表面提供活性配体。凝胶的背景将被设计成防止来自微生物(细菌和真菌)的所有不必要的分子相互作用，从而隔离特定的结合事件与存在于表面的配体。这种生物相容材料方法将允许明确地识别(I)配体-受体结合是否可以触发特定的微生物活动，以及(Ii)分子是否可以阻止特定的微生物活动，并且还可以从细菌混合物中分离和分离不同类型的菌株或表型。

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.