Computational Modeling of Biofilm Structure and Functions with Bacteria Motility Feature and Experiment Validation

Abstract

Biofilm is ubiquitous in our daily life, such as in dental plaque and sewage pipes. It is a microorganism, where bacteria stick together by secreting extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), a complex biophysical world. Biofilm is the main factor for much chronic disease, thus understanding the mechanics in biofilm development is critical for therapeutic treatment of biofilm.In this talk, our work on computational hydrodynamic modeling of biofilm would be presented. Both kinetic approaches from bacteria collision effects, and macroscopic view of mixing free energy will been discussed. Using GPGPU, 3D numerical solver has been developed analyzing biofilm structure and functions, such as heterogeneous structure formation, antimicrobial persistent and quorum sensing features. Bacteria motility modeling in biofilm will be studied, as well, from both microscopic and macroscopic view.Besides, our model has been validated by our collaborators' experiment results for varying biofilm persistence to antibiotics at different age and biofilm relapse after the cease of dosing. Persuasively, our model agrees quantitatively well. Hence it turns out to be an effective tool for analyzing the mechanism of biofilm formation and antimicrobial persistence, as well as therapeutic treatment of biofilm.