3pm on June 10, 2008 (Tuesday)
Molecular Science & Engineering Building, Room 3201A

"Optical Assembly of Synthetic Biofilms"

Jan Scrimgeour
Beckman Institute
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Cell-cell communication plays an important role in determining the offensive and defensive survival strategies employed by bacterial communities. We have combined optical tweezers and microfluidics to achieve lithographic patterning of complex, viable, biofilms of E. coli in a synthetic hydrogel scaffold. Such synthetic biofilms present a new platform for the study of cell-cell signaling with unique repeatability and environmental control.