ABSTRACT

Bacterial adhesion is important to applications ranging from prevention of infection on biomaterials, vaccine development, groundwater protection from mobile pathogens, biomineralization, food safety, biosensors and bioenergy. Hydrogen bonds have been considered an important part of the interaction between bacteria and surfaces, and several studies have suggested that a means to inhibit bacterial adhesion should focus on a method that disrupts the ability of the microbe to form hydrogen bonds with the substrate. The use of atomic force microscopy (AFM) to study bacterial adhesion is a widely accepted and commonly used technique. AFM provides an efficient tool to measure the adhesive interactions of bacterial polymers at the nano- and pico-Newton levels, since interactions between bacterial cells and either modified or unmodified AFM probes can be measured in a variety of solutions. Bacterial proteins and proteoglycans can usually be more appropriately fitted with the wormlike chain model.