Influence of Surface Properties on the Formation of Biofilms

当细菌附着在固体表面时，伴随着它们新的静止生活方式的几个变化。其中最值得注意的是一种称为细胞外聚合物的粘性物质的分泌。这是你早晨在牙齿上感觉到的薄膜，或者是你站在水下岩石上时脚下的滑层。吸附细胞、分泌产物和其他被招募的微生物的组合被称为生物膜，引起了化学家、生物学家、材料科学家和工业工程师的注意。水生生物膜在几秒钟内就会在船体上形成，促进更大的海洋生物(如藤壶)的附着，从而由于额外的阻力而增加燃料成本。几乎所有与水接触的工业制造过程都在努力领先细菌污垢一步，阻止管道中化学物质的流动，并改变热交换器的热传导。另一方面，生物膜是现代污水和废水处理策略的关键组成部分。固体表面的性质是生物膜形成的关键因素之一。然而，经过40年的调查，这仍然是人们获得的知识最少的领域之一。挑战在于界面环境的复杂性，包括底物、界面水分子、溶解离子和溶液中的其他物种。在过去的七年里，我们开发了一种实验和建模工具的组合，用于固体-水界面的结构阐明。我们现在建议调查表面和溶液条件如何影响生物膜发展的早期阶段。我们将使用光谱学、显微镜和数据分析程序的组合来实时监控生物膜界面环境的变化。这项工作的预期结果将使科学家能够在分子水平上更深入地了解控制生物膜生长的早期阶段的相互作用，从而产生新的控制策略。在此过程中，这项研究将为各级初级研究人员提供一个出色的多学科培训环境，为在学术和工业环境中担任领导角色做好准备。

When bacteria attach to solid surfaces, several changes accompany their new immobile lifestyle. Most noticeable among these is the secretion of a slimy material known as extracellular polymeric substance. This is the film that you feel on your teeth in the morning, or the slippery layer under your feet when standing on rocks under water. The combination of adsorbed cells, secreted products, and other recruited microbes is called a biofilm, and has attracted the attention of chemists, biologists, materials scientists and industrial engineers. Aquatic biofilms form on the hulls of ships within seconds, promote the attachments of larger marine organisms such as barnacles, and thereby increase fuel costs due to the additional drag. Nearly all industrial manufacturing processes in contact with water struggle to stay one step ahead of bacterial fouling, impeding the flow of chemicals in pipes, and altering the thermal conduction of heat exchangers. On the other hand, biofilms are key components modern sewage and wastewater treatment strategies. The nature of the solid surface is one of the factors identified as key to the formation of biofilms. And yet, after four decades of investigation, this remains one of the areas in which the least amount of knowledge has been acquired. The challenge lies in the complexity of the interfacial environment, involving the substrate, interfacial water molecules, dissolved ions, and other species in solutions. Over the past seven years, we have developed a combination of experimental and modeling tools that is geared towards structure elucidation at the solid-aqueous interface. We now propose to investigate how surface and solution conditions affect the early stages of biofilm development. We will employ a combination of spectroscopy, microscopy, and data analysis routines to monitor changes in the biofilm interfacial environment in real-time. The anticipated results of this work will enable scientists to have a deeper molecular-level picture of the interactions that govern the earliest stages of biofilm growth, leading to new strategies for their control. Along the way, this research will provide an outstanding multi-disciplinary training environment for junior researchers at all levels, in preparation for leadership roles in academic and industrial settings.