Patterned Biofilm Formation Reveals a Mechanism for
Structural Heterogeneity in Bacterial Biofilms
Huan Gu
Shuyu Hou
Chanokpon Yongyat
Suzanne De Tore
Dacheng Ren
10.1021/la402608z.s001
https://acs.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Patterned_Biofilm_Formation_Reveals_a_Mechanism_for_Structural_Heterogeneity_in_Bacterial_Biofilms/2382217
Bacterial
biofilms are ubiquitous and are the major cause of chronic
infections in humans and persistent biofouling in industry. Despite
the significance of bacterial biofilms, the mechanism of biofilm formation
and associated drug tolerance is still not fully understood. A major
challenge in biofilm research is the intrinsic heterogeneity in the
biofilm structure, which leads to temporal and spatial variation in
cell density and gene expression. To understand and control such structural
heterogeneity, surfaces with patterned functional alkanthiols were
used in this study to obtain <i>Escherichia coli</i> cell
clusters with systematically varied cluster size and distance between
clusters. The results from quantitative imaging analysis revealed
an interesting phenomenon in which multicellular connections can be
formed between cell clusters depending on the size of interacting
clusters and the distance between them. In addition, significant differences
in patterned biofilm formation were observed between wild-type <i>E. coli</i> RP437 and some of its isogenic mutants, indicating
that certain cellular and genetic factors are involved in interactions
among cell clusters. In particular, autoinducer-2-mediated quorum
sensing was found to be important. Collectively, these results provide
missing information that links cell-to-cell signaling and interaction
among cell clusters to the structural organization of bacterial biofilms.
2013-09-03 00:00:00
biofilm formation
cell clusters
Escherichia coli cell clusters
Patterned Biofilm Formation
Bacterial BiofilmsBacterial biofilms
coli RP 437