A biophysical threshold for biofilm formation
- Princeton University, United States
Abstract
Bacteria are ubiquitous in our daily lives, either as motile planktonic cells or as immobilized surface-attached biofilms. These different phenotypic states play key roles in agriculture, environment, industry, and medicine; hence, it is critically important to be able to predict the conditions under which bacteria transition from one state to the other. Unfortunately, these transitions depend on a dizzyingly complex array of factors that are determined by the intrinsic properties of the individual cells as well as those of their surrounding environments, and are thus challenging to describe. To address this issue, here, we develop a generally-applicable biophysical model of the interplay between motility-mediated dispersal and biofilm formation under positive quorum sensing control. Using this model, we establish a universal rule predicting how the onset and extent of biofilm formation depend collectively on cell concentration and motility, nutrient diffusion and consumption, chemotactic sensing, and autoinducer production. Our work thus provides a key step toward quantitatively predicting and controlling biofilm formation in diverse and complex settings.
Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting file; Source Data files have been provided for all Figures
Article and author information
Author details
Jenna Anne Moore-Ott
Sujit Sankar Datta
Funding
National Science Foundation (CBET-1941716)
- Sujit Sankar Datta
National Science Foundation (EF-2124863)
- Sujit Sankar Datta
National Science Foundation (DMR-2011750)
- Sujit Sankar Datta
Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew Biomedical Scholars Program)
- Sujit Sankar Datta
National Science Foundation (DGE-1656466)
- Jenna Anne Moore-Ott
Princeton University (Eric and Wendy 708 Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund)
- Sujit Sankar Datta
Princeton University (Princeton Catalysis Initiative)
- Sujit Sankar Datta
Princeton University (Reiner G. Stoll Undergraduate Summer Fellowship)
- Selena Chiu
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2022, Moore-Ott et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A biophysical threshold for biofilm formation
eLife 11:e76380.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.76380
