Biofilms as poroelastic materials

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Carpio, Ana, Cebrian, Elena, Vidal, Perfecto
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Carpio, Ana
Cebrian, Elena
Vidal, Perfecto
author_facet Carpio, Ana
Cebrian, Elena
Vidal, Perfecto
contents Biofilms are bacterial aggregates encased in a self-produced polymeric matrix which attach to moist surfaces and are extremely resistant to chemicals and antibiotics. Recent experiments show that their structure is defined by the interplay of elastic deformations and liquid transport within the biofilm, in response to the cellular activity and the interaction with the surrounding environment. We propose a poroelastic model for elastic deformation and liquid transport in three dimensional biofilms spreading on agar surfaces. The motion of the boundaries can be described by the combined use of Von Karman type approximations for the agar/biofilm interface and thin film approximations for the biofilm/air interface. Bacterial activity informs the macroscopic continuous model through source terms and residual stresses, either phenomenological or derived from microscopic models. We present a procedure to estimate the structure of such residual stresses, based on a simple cellular automata description of bacterial activity. Inspired by image processing, we show that a filtering strategy effectively smooths out the rough tensors provided by the stochastic cellular automata rules, allowing us to insert them in the macroscopic model without numerical instability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_07060
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Biofilms as poroelastic materials
Carpio, Ana
Cebrian, Elena
Vidal, Perfecto
Soft Condensed Matter
Numerical Analysis
Analysis of PDEs
Biological Physics
Cell Behavior
Biofilms are bacterial aggregates encased in a self-produced polymeric matrix which attach to moist surfaces and are extremely resistant to chemicals and antibiotics. Recent experiments show that their structure is defined by the interplay of elastic deformations and liquid transport within the biofilm, in response to the cellular activity and the interaction with the surrounding environment. We propose a poroelastic model for elastic deformation and liquid transport in three dimensional biofilms spreading on agar surfaces. The motion of the boundaries can be described by the combined use of Von Karman type approximations for the agar/biofilm interface and thin film approximations for the biofilm/air interface. Bacterial activity informs the macroscopic continuous model through source terms and residual stresses, either phenomenological or derived from microscopic models. We present a procedure to estimate the structure of such residual stresses, based on a simple cellular automata description of bacterial activity. Inspired by image processing, we show that a filtering strategy effectively smooths out the rough tensors provided by the stochastic cellular automata rules, allowing us to insert them in the macroscopic model without numerical instability.
title Biofilms as poroelastic materials
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Numerical Analysis
Analysis of PDEs
Biological Physics
Cell Behavior
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07060