Abstract
Abstract
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 behavior. Bacterial biofilms are more than the sum of their parts: single-cell behavior has a complex relation to collective community behavior, 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 the work of physicists and physical scientists who use physics to engage fundamental concepts in bacterial biofilm microbiology, including adhesion, sensing, motility, signaling, 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 labor.
Funder
National Institute of General Medical Sciences
DOD ACC-APG-RTP Division
National Institutes of Health
Swiss National Science Foundation
European Molecular Biology Organization
Gabriella Giorgi-Cavaglieri Foundation
Gebert Rüf Stiftung
Foundation Beytout
Lundbeck Fellowship
Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative
National Science Foundation
Welch Foundation
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Simons Foundation
Canada 150
Army Research Office
National Natural Science Foundation of China
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan
Japan Science and Technology Agency
Office of Naval Research
Air Force Office of Scientific Research
U.S. Department of Energy
Burroughs Welcome Fund
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
Charles H Hood Foundation
Hartwell Foundation
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Research Grants Council of Hong Kong
CHKU
Max Planck Society
Human Frontier Research Program
European Research Council
MIT-Germany MISTI program
James S McDonnell Foundation
Subject
Cell Biology,Molecular Biology,Structural Biology,Biophysics