Linking Matrix Composition with Spatially Resolved Mechanical Properties in Polymicrobial Biofilms

将基质组成与多微生物生物膜中的空间分辨机械特性联系起来

• 批准号: 2100447
• 负责人: Oluwaseyi Balogun
• 金额: $ 45万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-15 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2100447&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Linking; Matrix; Composition; Spatially; Resolved

This award will support research to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of biofilm mechanical and physical properties. Biofilms are soft multi-component biological materials. They are made of microbial communities attached to surfaces and encased in polymeric substances. It is thought that these polymeric substances provide mechanical stability. Detrimental biofilms cause billions of dollars per year of damage via biofouling or corrosion of ship hulls, heat exchangers, water treatment and distribution infrastructure, membranes, and in the food, oil, and beverage industries. In addition, they account for 65% of infections that originate in hospitals, affecting 17 million people and causing at least 550,000 deaths annually in the US. Conversely, beneficial biofilms can clean water and remediate groundwater and soil. Despite the crucial relevance of biofilms to diverse industrial, medical, and environmental applications, little is known about how local biofilm mechanical properties are mediated by encasement composition, community diversity, and biofilm physical structure. This award will support fundamental research to understand the relationship between microscale biofilm mechanical properties, encasement and community composition, and physical structure. This work will study biofilms of increasing complexity, including complex environmentally-relevant mixed-culture biofilms. The results generated from executing this award will directly inform new strategies to manage biofilms in critical applications (e.g., remove when they are undesirable, and retain when they are beneficial), leading to significant cost savings. The project provides additional benefits, including diversifying the nation’s STEM workforce through multidisciplinary training for underrepresented students at grade school, undergraduate, and graduate levels.This grant will advance our understanding of critical yet poorly understood interrelationships between molecular composition, physical structure, and mechanical properties in polymicrobial biofilms exposed to disparate environmental cues. The majority of the work to date on biofilm mechanical properties has employed macrorheological tools that neglect the inherent local heterogeneity in biofilms and has focused primarily on pure culture biofilms (e.g., P. aeruginosa alone) that are not representative of, and likely differ significantly in extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) composition and mechanical properties from, polymicrobial biofilms that are found in medical, environmental and industrial settings. Specifically, the research team will, 1) study local structure- composition-viscoelastic property relationships in biofilms; 2) study biofilmsubstratum adhesion and cohesion properties; and 3) develop homogenization-based constitutive models to predict the multi-scale mechanical properties of biofilms. Project results will elucidate, for the first time, how microscale variations in EPS constituents (e.g., polysaccharides, proteins, eDNA) mediate local heterogeneity in shear moduli and viscosity, adhesion strength, and cohesive fracture energy in dual and mixed-culture biofilms, and how environmental cues and microbial populations present modify this relationship. This improved understanding of spatially resolved structure/ composition- mechanical property relationships will provide the basis for rational management and control of biofilms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项将支持研究，以了解生物膜机械和物理特性的机械基础。生物膜是软的多组分生物材料。它们由附在表面的微生物群落制成，并包裹在聚合物物质中。人们认为这些聚合物提供了机械稳定性。有害的生物膜每年通过生物污染或船舶的腐蚀，热交换器，水处理和分配基础设施，膜以及食品，油和卧室工业造成数十亿美元的损害。此外，它们占医院中感染的65％，影响1700万人，每年在美国造成至少550,000人死亡。相反，有益的生物膜可以清洁水并补充地下水和土壤。尽管生物膜与​​潜水员的工业，医疗和环境应用至关重要，但对于局部生物膜机械性能如何通过包装组成，社区多样性和生物膜物理结构介导的局部生物膜机械性能知之甚少。该奖项将支持基本研究，以了解微观生物膜机械性能，包装和社区组成以及物理结构之间的关系。这项工作将研究复杂性增加的生物膜，包括复杂的环境与环境混合文化生物膜。执行该奖项产生的结果将直接为管理关键应用程序中生物膜的新策略提供信息（例如，在不希望的何时删除它们，并在受益时保留），从而可节省大量成本。该项目提供了更多的好处，包括通过对小学，本科和研究生级的多学科培训来多样化的STEM劳动力。这项格兰特将促进我们对分子组成，物理结构，物理结构和机械性生物含量的分子组成，物理结构和机械性生物的机械性能之间的相互关系的理解，以示异地。 The majority of the work to date on biofilm mechanical properties has been employed macrorheological tools that neglect the inherit local heterogeneity in biofilms and has focused primarily on pure culture biofilms (e.g., P. aeruginosa alone) that are not representative of, and likely different significantly in extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) composition and mechanical properties from, polymicrobial biofilms that are在医疗，环境和工业环境中发现。具体而言，研究团队将1）研究局部结构 - 生物膜中的构成 - 维易弹性性关系； 2）研究生物膜胶状粘合剂和内聚力的特性； 3）基于发展均化的宪法模型，以预测生物膜的多尺度机械性能。项目结果将首次阐明EPS构建体中微观的变化（例如，多糖，蛋白质，EDNA）在剪切模量和粘度，粘合力强度，粘合力强度以及在双重和混合培养生物结构中的粘附力和粘附性裂缝能量中的局部异质性，以及如何对环境培养和微生物的生物质量和微生物质量的群体进行了修改。对空间分辨的结构/组成 - 机械性质关系的增强理解将为生物膜的理性管理和控制提供基础。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估该基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响来审查标准。