video: Until now, biofilms -- colonies of microbes like bacteria that grow together in a matrix produced by the cells themselves -- have been poorly understood. Yet, they can be costly and dangerous. Infections related to hip- and knee-replacement surgery are often related to biofilms. And, biofilms are highly tolerant to antibiotics. Persister cells actually go dormant during treatment and, when the treatment stops, they return and repopulate. Biofilms in oil and water pipelines can rot the metal from inside, destroying infrastructure and potentially introducing contaminants into the water supply.
Coming up with effective ways to control biofilms starts with understanding the complicated communications among biofilm cells, as well as interactions between bacteria and host cells.
With support from the Office of Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation within the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation (NSF), one research team working to advance understanding of biofilms is led by Dacheng Ren and colleagues at Syracuse University: Rebecca Bader, Yan-Yeung Luk, Radhakrishna Sureshkumar and Roy Welch.
The team creates synthetic biofilms to better understand their formation and behavior. And, they use supercomputer models to study the molecular structure of biofilms.
Credit: Kate Tobin, Science Nation Producer