Structured silicon for revealing transient and integrated signal transductions in microbial systems

Xiang Gao*, Yuanwen Jiang, Yiliang Lin, Kyoung Ho Kim, Yin Fang, Jaeseok Yi, Lingyuan Meng, Hoo Cheol Lee, Zhiyue Lu, Owen Leddy, Rui Zhang, Qing Tu, Wei Feng, Vishnu Nair, Philip J. Griffin, Fengyuan Shi, Gajendra S. Shekhawat, Aaron R. Dinner, Hong Gyu Park, Bozhi Tian

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

Bacterial response to transient physical stress is critical to their homeostasis and survival in the dynamic natural environment. Because of the lack of biophysical tools capable of delivering precise and localized physical perturbations to a bacterial community, the underlying mechanism of microbial signal transduction has remained unexplored. Here, we developed multiscale and structured silicon (Si) materials as nongenetic optical transducers capable of modulating the activities of both single bacterial cells and biofilms at high spatiotemporal resolution. Upon optical stimulation, we capture a previously unidentified form of rapid, photothermal gradient–dependent, intercellular calcium signaling within the biofilm. We also found an unexpected coupling between calcium dynamics and biofilm mechanics, which could be of importance for biofilm resistance. Our results suggest that functional integration of Si materials and bacteria, and associated control of signal transduction, may lead to hybrid living matter toward future synthetic biology and adaptable materials.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbereaay2760
JournalScience Advances
Volume6
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - 2020

Funding

We would like to thank R. Haselkorn for the useful discussion during this project and O. Zaborina for providing P. aeruginosa. We thank K. Watters for scientific editing of the manuscript. This work made use of instruments in the Electron Microscopy Service (Research Resources Center, UIC). Funding: B.T. acknowledges support from Office of Naval Research (ONR YIP, N000141612530; PECASE, N000141612958). H.-G.P. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (2018R1A3A3000666). A.R.D. acknowledges support from the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) and National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Material Science (DMR)-1420709. K.-H.K. acknowledges support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIT) (2019R1C1C1006681). Author

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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