TY - JOUR

T1 - Roadmap on emerging concepts in the physical biology of bacterial biofilms

T2 - from surface sensing to community formation

AU - Wong, Gerard C L

AU - Antani, Jyot D

AU - Lele, Pushkar

AU - Nan, Beiyan

AU - Kühn, Marco Julian

AU - Persat, Alexandre

AU - Bru, Jean-Louis

AU - Høyland-Kroghsbo, Nina Molin

AU - Siryaporn, Albert

AU - Conrad, Jacinta

AU - Carrara, Francesco

AU - Yawata, Yutaka

AU - Stocker, Roman

AU - Brun, Yves

AU - Whitfield, Greg

AU - Lee, Calvin

AU - de Anda, Jaime

AU - Schmidt, William C

AU - Golestanian, Ramin

AU - O'Toole, George A

AU - Floyd, Kyle

AU - Yildiz, Fitnat

AU - Yang, Shuai

AU - Jin, Fan

AU - Toyofuku, Masanori

AU - Eberl, Leo

AU - Nobuhiko, Nomura

AU - Zacharoff, Lori

AU - El-Naggar, Mohamed Y

AU - Yalcin, Sibel Ebru

AU - Malvankar, Nikhil

AU - Rojas-Andrade, Mauricio D

AU - Hochbaum, Allon

AU - Yan, Jing

AU - Stone, Howard A

AU - Wingreen, Ned S

AU - Bassler, Bonnie

AU - Wu, Yilin

AU - Xu, Haoran

AU - Drescher, Knut

AU - Dunkel, Jörn

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Bacterial biofilms are communities of bacteria that exist as aggregates that can adhere to surfaces or be free-standing. This complex, social mode of cellular organization is fundamental to the physiology of microbes and often exhibits surprising behaviour. Bacterial biofilms are more than the sum of their parts: Single cell behaviour has a complex relation to collective community behaviour, in a manner perhaps cognate to the complex relation between atomic physics and condensed matter physics. Biofilm microbiology is a relatively young field by biology standards, but it has already attracted intense attention from physicists. Sometimes, this attention takes the form of seeing biofilms as inspiration for new physics. In this roadmap, we highlight the work of those who have taken the opposite strategy: We highlight work of physicists and physical scientists who use physics to engage fundamental concepts in bacterial biofilm microbiology, including adhesion, sensing, motility, signalling, memory, energy flow, community formation and cooperativity. These contributions are juxtaposed with microbiologists who have made recent important discoveries on bacterial biofilms using state-of-the-art physical methods. The contributions to this roadmap exemplify how well physics and biology can be combined to achieve a new synthesis, rather than just a division of labour.

AB - Bacterial biofilms are communities of bacteria that exist as aggregates that can adhere to surfaces or be free-standing. This complex, social mode of cellular organization is fundamental to the physiology of microbes and often exhibits surprising behaviour. Bacterial biofilms are more than the sum of their parts: Single cell behaviour has a complex relation to collective community behaviour, in a manner perhaps cognate to the complex relation between atomic physics and condensed matter physics. Biofilm microbiology is a relatively young field by biology standards, but it has already attracted intense attention from physicists. Sometimes, this attention takes the form of seeing biofilms as inspiration for new physics. In this roadmap, we highlight the work of those who have taken the opposite strategy: We highlight work of physicists and physical scientists who use physics to engage fundamental concepts in bacterial biofilm microbiology, including adhesion, sensing, motility, signalling, memory, energy flow, community formation and cooperativity. These contributions are juxtaposed with microbiologists who have made recent important discoveries on bacterial biofilms using state-of-the-art physical methods. The contributions to this roadmap exemplify how well physics and biology can be combined to achieve a new synthesis, rather than just a division of labour.

U2 - 10.1088/1478-3975/abdc0e

DO - 10.1088/1478-3975/abdc0e

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 33462162

VL - 18

JO - Physical Biology

JF - Physical Biology

SN - 1478-3967

IS - 5

ER -