(420b) Mechanisms of Bacterial Biofilm Growth and Biofilm-Virus Interactions

On most moist surfaces, bacteria grow into communities termed biofilms, which display strongly increased resistance to antibiotics, and constitute the most abundant form of biomass on Earth. I will first present new microscopy and imaging techniques we recently developed to follow dynamical processes in biofilms at the single-cell level. I will then proceed to show how we applied this novel imaging technology in combination with genetics and molecular techniques to discover mechanisms of basic processes in biofilm development: I will show how individual cells within biofilms interact with each other, how cells disperse from biofilms, and how bacterial biofilms interact with bacteriophage viruses, which are the most frequently encountered predators of bacteria in the environment. This work on biofilm dynamics at the single cell level promises many new discoveries for preventing biofilm growth on environmental and biomedical interfaces.