Project Title: Fabrication of surfaces for the promotion of bacterial biofilms
Group: Polymer Micro & Nano Engineering
Supervisors: Rafael Taboryski and Lone Gram
Project Description:
Bacterial biofilms can be, on the one hand, detrimental to both human life and industrial processes, e.g., causing infection, pathogen contamination while on the other hand, beneficial in environmental technologies and bioprocesses. Therefore, there are two opposite challenging goals for the bacterial biofilm formation: one is the prevention and inhibition of biofilms, e.g. in clinical settings, and the other is their enhancement and promotion.
Understanding the physico-chemical and biochemical interactions between bacteria and biotic/abiotic surfaces can be the next step towards developing appropriate technologies and materials to facilitate the biofilm formation in industrial production or in natural environments. A range of different polymer surfaces to facilitate microbial biofilm formation will be fabricated and developed. Changing the size and the space between nanopillars can improve, reduce or inhibit the adhesion of bacteria. Relevant length scales for surface morphology and relevant surface energies will be tested.
Perspective:
Despite an enormous improvement of fabrication of antimicrobial surfaces, there is a need for fabrication of materials where biofilm colonization of beneficial bacteria is promoted. The idea of the present project is to fabricate different surfaces and to understand how a particular surface can facilitate the biofilm growth of marine (beneficial) bacteria. The attention will be on how the biofilm of Roseobacter species is facilitated in aquaculture units and how to optimize the bacterial cell–surface interaction as well as how the production of bioactive molecules (probiotics) may inhibit bacterial colonization (for example antagonism against fish pathogens). A process for obtaining probiotic surface properties will be explored.
Therefore, this PhD project will possibly lead to the fabrication of materials where biofilm colonization is enhanced for different industrial processes within natural environments and aquaculture.