NJIT Applied Mathematics Colloquium
Friday, March 9, 2012, 11:30am
Cullimore Lecture Hall II
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Modeling of Microbial Biofilm Communities
Isaac Klapper
Montana State University
Single-celled, microbial organisms are estimated to make up a large
fraction of extant biomass. Many of these microbial communities exist
in the biofilm form. (A biofilm is a dense aggregation of
microorganisms that are embedded in a hydrated polymer matrix of their
own secretion.) The distinction between microorganisms in the biofilm
state and those in free aqueous suspension (i.e., planktonic) is
important. Microorganisms in biofilms function very differently because
they are subject to physical, chemical, and biological phenomena that
have less impact on conventional planktonic cultures. Multicellular
phenomena such as diffusion gradient formation, intercellular
communication, differentiation, and extracellular electron transfer
operate in biofilms and make them scientifically rich topics of
investigation and also inherently complex. Mathematical models are
therefore valuable complementary approaches to analyzing and
understanding these systems. Resulting models are inherently
interdisciplinary; the rich interaction of microbiology, chemistry, and
physics requires theory grounded in the mathematics. In this talk, I
will discuss a class of biofilm models based on continuum mechanics
principles that present a natural platform for combining the relevant
biology, chemistry and physics, and will present a few important
implications that these models predict.
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