Measuring bacterial adhesion in real time

Biofouling is the process by which bacteria, algae, or fungi coat materials. It can slow ships by creating drag, contaminate food or oil as those substances pass through processing equipment, and infect medical devices before they are inserted in the body. In contrast, in wastewater treatment, the microorganisms from biofouling are exploited to process waste.

These applications make quantifying the amount of bacterial adhesion an essential task. However, current techniques cannot retrieve information in situ or look through opaque materials like metals, and they measure bacteria mass rather than surface area.

Jones and Buie used rotating disk electrodes and their corresponding fluid dynamics solutions to explore biofouling for two bacteria species in real time on a metallic surface. The deviation of their measurements in the system from the established solutions correlates with the bacterial adhesion to the surface.

Biofouling is largely treated using stronger collections of disinfectants and longer contact times as bacteria adapt and change. The more corrosive the chemicals, the more hazards for the people using them and the more damage to the material.

“We wanted to know, as biofouling happens, when is the best point to intervene? How much chemical would we want to intervene? How much force we would need to intervene?” said author A-Andrew Dhafir Jones. “Also, we wanted to see how the structure and shape of our materials affects adhesion and the time course of adhesion.”

The team believes the slight differences between their measurements and data from other work might provide valuable information about the materials or time windows. They plan to explore other materials, organisms, rotational speeds, and fluid media.

Source: “In situ continuous electrochemical quantification of bacterial adhesion to electrically polarized metallic surfaces under shear,” by A.-Andrew D. Jones III and Cullen R. Buie, Biointerphases (2022). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1116/6.0001585 .

This paper is part of the Quantitative Analysis of Biofouling Collection, learn more here .