Issue 35, 2021

Dynamic and mechanical evolution of an oil–water interface during bacterial biofilm formation

Abstract

We present an experimental study combining particle tracking, active microrheology, and differential dynamic microscopy (DDM) to investigate the dynamics and rheology of an oil–water interface during biofilm formation by the bacteria Pseudomonas Aeruginosa PA14. The interface transitions from an active fluid dominated by the swimming motion of adsorbed bacteria at early age to an active viscoelastic system at late ages when the biofilm is established. The microrheology measurements using microscale magnetic rods indicate that the biofilm behaves as a viscoelastic solid at late age. The bacteria motility at the interface during the biofilm formation, which is characterized in the DDM measurements, evolves from diffusive motion at early age to constrained, quasi-localized motion at later age. Similarly, the mobility of passively moving colloidal spheres at the interface decreases significantly with increasing interface age and shows a dependence on sphere size after biofilm formation that is orders-of-magnitude larger than that expected in a homogeneous system in equilibrium. We attribute this anomalous size dependence to either length-scale-dependent rheology of the biofilm or widely differing effects of the bacteria activity on the motion of spheres of different sizes.

Graphical abstract: Dynamic and mechanical evolution of an oil–water interface during bacterial biofilm formation

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
28 May 2021
Accepted
13 Aug 2021
First published
16 Aug 2021

Soft Matter, 2021,17, 8195-8210

Author version available

Dynamic and mechanical evolution of an oil–water interface during bacterial biofilm formation

D. P. Rivas, N. D. Hedgecock, K. J. Stebe and R. L. Leheny, Soft Matter, 2021, 17, 8195 DOI: 10.1039/D1SM00795E

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