Roadmap on emerging concepts in the physical biology of bacterial biofilms: from surface sensing to community formation
Abstract
Bacterial biofilms are communities of bacteria that exist as aggregates that can adhere to surfaces or be free-standing. This complex, social mode of cellular organization is fundamental to the physiology of microbes and often exhibits surprising behavior. Bacterial biofilms are more than the sum of their parts: single-cell behavior has a complex relation to collective community behavior, in a manner perhaps cognate to the complex relation between atomic physics and condensed matter physics. Biofilm microbiology is a relatively young field by biology standards, but it has already attracted intense attention from physicists. Sometimes, this attention takes the form of seeing biofilms as inspiration for new physics. In this roadmap, we highlight the work of those who have taken the opposite strategy: we highlight the work of physicists and physical scientists who use physics to engage fundamental concepts in bacterial biofilm microbiology, including adhesion, sensing, motility, signaling, memory, energy flow, community formation and cooperativity. These contributions are juxtaposed with microbiologists who have made recent important discoveries on bacterial biofilms using state-of-the-art physical methods. The contributions to this roadmap exemplify how well physics and biology can be combined to achieve a new synthesis, rather than just a division of labor.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jun 23, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1088/1478-3975/abdc0e
Entities
People
- Albert Siryaporn
- Alexandre Persat
- Allon I Hochbaum
- Beiyan Nan
- Bonnie L. Bassler
- Calvin K Lee
- Fan Jin
- Fitnat H. Yildiz
- Francesco Carrara
- George A O'Toole
- Gerard C L Wong
- Gregory B Whitfield
- Haoran Xu
- Howard A. Stone
- Jacinta Conrad
- Jaime de Anda
- Jean-louis Bru
- Jing Chen
- Jing Yan
- Jyot D. Antani
- Jörn Dunkel
- Knut Drescher
- Kyle A Floyd
- Leo Eberl
- Lori A. Zacharoff
- Marco J Kühn
- Masanori Toyofuku
- Mauricio D Rojas-andrade
- Mohamed Y El-Naggar
- Ned Wingreen
- Nikhil S. Malvankar
- Nina Molin Høyland-Kroghsbo
- Nobuhiko Nomura
- Pushkar P Lele
- Ramin Golestanian
- Roman Stocker
- Shuai Yang
- Sibel Ebru Yalçın
- William C. Schmidt
- Yilin Wu
- Yutaka Yawata
- Yves V. Brun
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Army Research Office
- Burroughs Wellcome Fund
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
- European Molecular Biology Organization
- European Research Council
- Gebert Rüf Stiftung
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative
- Hartwell Foundation
- Health Resources in Action
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- James S. McDonnell Foundation
- Japan Science and Technology Agency
- Max Planck Society
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences
- National Institutes of Health
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Naval Research
- Robert A. Welch Foundation
- Simons Foundation
- Swiss National Science Foundation
- United States Department of Energy