Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting | Ascona 2026

Mechanobiology of Infection

Wednesday Speaker Abstracts

MECHANOBIOLOGY OF BACTERIAL COLONIES AND BIOFILMS Vasily Zaburdaev 1,2 ; 1 Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Department of Biology, Erlangen, Germany 2 Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin, Erlangen, Germany Bacteria generate and utilize mechanical forces through their whole life cycle. Individual cells deploy forces to swim, to attach, and move on surfaces. Moving and interacting, bacteria find each other and form microcolonies that consist of several thousands of cells and are held together by a network of active, retractile cell appendages. Such microcolonies are often the functional units of the bacterial existence in natural settings and in the context of bacterial infection. We put forward theoretical framework describing the bacterial microcolonies as active viscoelastic materials. Our theory enables quantification of forces experienced by the cells during colony formation, which may determine their differentiation and resistance to the effects of antibiotics. We discuss how our models might be also useful in eukaryotic systems such as organoids, tumour spheroids, clustering of immune cells or neurons. Microcolonies may further develop into even more complex differentiated bacterial communities known as biofilms. There, bacteria embed themselves in the self-secreted extracellular matrix creating an analogue of multicellular tissues with markedly different mechanical properties. We will outline some future research avenues deepening this analogy and illustrate it with an intriguing example of how bacterial biofilms recover after a macroscopic damage.

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