Bio-Active Coatings to Manipulate Interactions of Foulers with Engineered Surfaces
Abstract
Bacterial biofilms are ubiquitous in nature. These surface-attached communities form quickly on virtually any submerged surfaces. Biofilms often need to be minimized as they can cause infections and biofouling issues in healthcare, food and water manufacturing, and marine transportation. Nonetheless, biofilms may be desirable, upon appropriate programming, as building blocks for self-actuated and self-repairing living coatings to perform complex tasks such as discouraging the adhesion of larger eukaryotic marine organisms to prevent severe ship hull biofouling and/or its environmental consequences. Despite some success of extant antifouling materials, fresh conceptual strategies to combatting biofouling are needed to compete with the performance currently attainable by biocidal coatings. Distinct from past approaches to biofouling, which treat bacteria cells as passive colloids, the proposed ONR project recognizes bacteria to be complex living systems with dynamic structure and metabolisms and sophisticated chemical communication systems. Leveraging the recent breakthroughs in microbiology, this project will enable novel approaches to biofouling and transform the understanding and engineering of bacterial biofilms. Understanding marine bacteria is crucial for biofouling prevention because they are among the first to settle on a submerged surface and they regulate the adhesion of larger organisms such as algae and barnacles. The ubiquitous symbiosis between bacteria and eukaryotes often exacerbates the issue of biofouling. Upon proper programming, that symbiosis has the potential to serves as a gateway towards broader control over a wide range of oceanic species as autonomous systems and/or living materials in applications of sensing, biosynthesis, and robotics. The PI will design and synthesize functional polymer coatings to program the behavior and phenotype of bacterial biofilms. Those material designs build upon her preliminary results showing that (i) molecular heterogeneities that match the length-scale of the sensing apparatus used by a bacterium reduced its biofilm formation; and (ii) exposure to a polypyridine coating led to biofilms with reduced production of a siderophore, a class of molecules that enable the bacteria-algae symbiosis. In the proposed research, the PI will systematically unravel the effects of those engineered surfaces on the phenotype and behavior of living marine foulers, and thereby establish a framework for understanding and manipulating fouler-surface interactions and symbiotic relationships among foulers. That framework also positions bacterial biofilms as a living coatings that send communal signals to discourage the adhesion of eukaryotic foulers. Three classes of polymer coatings will be studied as important exemplars of the proposed bio-active materials design: Objective 1: Surfaces that minimize interactions with the sensory apparatus used by bacteria. Objective 2: Reactive surfaces that intercept communal signaling during biofilm formation. Objective 3: Surfaces that program biofilm metabolism to render them living antifouling coatings. The proposed research is designed to champion a fundamentally new surface material design paradigm for management of biofouling, in the context of ship hull fouling. It is aligned with the Framework Priorities in several ways. The research offers knowledge on the adaptive response of marine organisms to synthetic materials, inspiring strategies of using synthetic materials to program biological functions. The research has the potential to enable novel antifouling or underwater disease control strategies, enhancing Operational Endurance and Scalable Lethality. Moreover, the mechanism of using marine bacteria to regulate marine eukaryotic organisms can be easily adapted for sensing and other autonomous tasks, potentially enhancing Integrated & Distributed Forces and Sensing & Sense-Making.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 12, 2023
- Source ID
- N000142312189
Entities
People
- Rong Yang
Organizations
- Cornell University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy