Bacteria–surface interactions

Abstract

The interaction of bacteria with surfaces has important implications in a range of areas, including bioenergy, biofouling, biofilm formation, and the infection of plants and animals. Many of the interactions of bacteria with surfaces produce changes in the expression of genes that influence cell morphology and behavior, including genes essential for motility and surface attachment. Despite the attention that these phenotypes have garnered, the bacterial systems used for sensing and responding to surfaces are still not well understood. An understanding of these mechanisms will guide the development of new classes of materials that inhibit and promote cell growth, and complement studies of the physiology of bacteria in contact with surfaces. Recent studies from a range of fields in science and engineering are poised to guide future investigations in this area. This review summarizes recent studies on bacteria-surface interactions, discusses mechanisms of surface sensing and consequences of cell attachment, provides an overview of surfaces that have been used in bacterial studies, and highlights unanswered questions in this field.

Microbots Decorated with Silver Nanoparticles Kill Bacteria in Aqueous Media

“…As it has been previously demonstrated that bacteria display preferential adhesion to metals 47,48 and the negative charge of their cell wall favors their interactions with positive charged surfaces by van der Waals and electrostatic forces. 52,53 Thus, these interactions promote, in this particular case, the adhesion to the Au cap where the AgNPs are attached (Figure 4 As the microbots contain Fe as a sandwitched material (Au/Fe/Mg) on the particle, AgNPs coated Janus microbots are capable to remove the bacteria from contaminated solutions using their magnetic properties.…”

“…44,45 The high antibacterial capacity of the developed AgNPs based Janus microbots is the result of two synergistic effects: (i) the enhanced contact killing by the combination of the Janus microbot self-propulsion with the immobilized AgNPs on their surface 46 and (ii) the capability of gold bacteria adhesion. 47,48 Therefore, the AgNPs coated Janus microbots are able to clean waterborne bacteria within 15 min of swimming in contaminated water. In addition, AgNPs coated Janus microbots can eliminate bacteria by their attachment to Au surface using a magnetic field.…”

Tunable conjugated polymers for bacterial differentiation

“…The extensive literature in these areas reveals that changing surface parameters has different effects depending on the kind of bacteria [57]. One of the surface parameters which has a drastic effect on bacterial adhesion is hydrophobicity of both the surface of cells and materials [63].…”

“…Many factors affect bacterial adhesion to a surface, including the properties of the surface material, environmental conditions and also the bacterial cell surface properties, and this makes it a complex and multifactorial phenomenon [40,[54][55][56][57][58]. Bacterial cell attachment to a surface is generally described by two stages; initial attachment, which is rapid and reversible and involves physicochemical interactions between bacterial cell surfaces and the material surfaces, and non-reversible attachment, which involves specific and non-specific interactions between proteins on the bacterial surface structures and binding molecules on the material surface, as well as physicochemical interactions [59,60].…”

Biomechanical Analysis of Infectious Biofilms

“…It should be clearly stated from the outset what will not be considered here. The interactions between the microbes and the surface influence initial biofilm formation and generate adhesive complexes that need to be overcome or dismantled prior to large-scale motion or detachment [85,96], but this important topic is simply too extensive to cover here. In addition, self-propelled bacterial swimmers are most commonly associated with the planktonic phenotype but are known to arise in some biofilms, both early stage and mature [45,76], and could potentially be tractable to the analytical tools of active matter currently undergoing vigorous investigation [57], but since their relationship with biofilm mechanics has not been explored they will not be discussed further.…”