Our next Lunch and Learn will be held Thursday, Mar. 27, in Howey N201/202. We will have lunch at 12:00 noon followed by a talk from 12:30 to 1:30 pm.
The speaker for this event will be Pablo Bravo from the Yunker Lab.
Title – Colony size and antibiotic tolerance: the role of spatial dynamics
Abstract: Biofilms, communities of microorganisms embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix, play a critical role in the development of persistent infections resistant to conventional antibiotic treatments. In practice, antibiotic concentrations have to be increased (10-1000x) to treat biofilms in relation to planktonic cells. As biofilms increase in size, metabolic and phenotypic gradients form, leading to a heterogeneous composition. In this talk, I’ll be discussing how the spatial dynamics inside the colony are affected by colony size and can lead to large increases in antibiotic tolerance. We show preliminary results capturing critical heights after which biofilms are not affected by antibiotic treatment, as well as structural changes in colonies after treatment. Here, we aim to quantify this behavior by identifying these critical thresholds and maximum colony size of colonies in presence of stress. We also explore how the scaling, in regards to the antibiotic concentration, is different when using bactericidal and bacteriostatic drugs.
