Department of Bioengineering, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, CA 90095, United States of America.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, CA 90095, United States of America.
Phys Biol. 2021 Jun 23;18(5). doi: 10.1088/1478-3975/abdc0e.
Bacterial biofilms are communities of bacteria that exist as aggregates that can adhere to surfaces or be free-standing. This complex, social mode of cellular organization is fundamental to the physiology of microbes and often exhibits surprising behavior. Bacterial biofilms are more than the sum of their parts: single-cell behavior has a complex relation to collective community behavior, in a manner perhaps cognate to the complex relation between atomic physics and condensed matter physics. Biofilm microbiology is a relatively young field by biology standards, but it has already attracted intense attention from physicists. Sometimes, this attention takes the form of seeing biofilms as inspiration for new physics. In this roadmap, we highlight the work of those who have taken the opposite strategy: we highlight the work of physicists and physical scientists who use physics to engage fundamental concepts in bacterial biofilm microbiology, including adhesion, sensing, motility, signaling, memory, energy flow, community formation and cooperativity. These contributions are juxtaposed with microbiologists who have made recent important discoveries on bacterial biofilms using state-of-the-art physical methods. The contributions to this roadmap exemplify how well physics and biology can be combined to achieve a new synthesis, rather than just a division of labor.
细菌生物膜是由细菌组成的群落，它们可以聚集在一起附着在表面上，也可以自由漂浮。这种复杂的、社会性的细胞组织方式是微生物生理学的基础，通常表现出令人惊讶的行为。细菌生物膜不仅仅是其组成部分的总和：单细胞行为与集体社区行为之间存在复杂的关系，这种关系也许类似于原子物理学和凝聚态物理学之间的复杂关系。从生物学标准来看，生物膜微生物学是一个相对年轻的领域，但它已经引起了物理学家的强烈关注。有时，这种关注采取的形式是将生物膜视为新物理学的灵感来源。在本路线图中，我们强调了那些采取相反策略的人的工作：我们强调了那些利用物理学来研究细菌生物膜微生物学基本概念的物理学家和物理科学家的工作，包括粘附、感应、运动、信号转导、记忆、能量流、群落形成和协作。这些贡献与利用最先进的物理方法在细菌生物膜方面取得近期重要发现的微生物学家并列。本路线图中的贡献说明了物理学和生物学可以结合得多么好，以实现新的综合，而不仅仅是分工。
