This project is motivated by the lack of understanding of the effect of the charge of the biopolymers, bacterial surface composition, and roughness on bacterial adhesion. The available adhesion and bacterial interaction force models are not without limitations. First, roughness of the interacting surfaces is usually ignored as almost all adhesion models were developed for smooth surfaces, with the exception of few cases. A second limitation is that the effect of the biopolymer charge was not counted in the existing bacterial models. Finally, the polymer models that are being used to study the bacterial surface biopolymer properties were developed for neutral molecules. Therefore, I would like to incorporate the experimental results of part 1 to enhance and develop the existing bacterial models so that takes the effect of bacterial surface biopolymers charge and substrate roughness is accounted for.

Application of freely jointed chain (FJC) model of polymer's elasticity to investigate the elasticity of P. putida KT2442 surface biopolymers in 1 M KCl solution. Symbols are measured data with AFM and solid lines are the FJC model fits.

Failure of soft particle DLVO theory to explain the interactions measured between E. coli JM109 and silicon nitride in water.

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