Studying the Symbiotic Bacterium in Individual, Living Nematodes Using Microfluidic Systems.

Animal-microbe symbioses are ubiquitous in nature and scientifically important in diverse areas, including ecology, medicine, and agriculture. nematodes and bacteria compose an established, successful model system for investigating microbial pathogenesis and mutualism. The bacterium is a species-specific mutualist of insect-infecting nematodes.

Decoding the Chemical Language of Motile Bacteria by Using High-Throughput Microfluidic Assays.

Motile bacteria navigate chemical environments by using chemoreceptors. The output of these protein sensors is linked to motility machinery and enables bacteria to follow chemical gradients. Understanding the chemical specificity of different families of chemoreceptors is essential for predicting and controlling bacterial behavior in ecological niches, including symbiotic and pathogenic interactions with plants and mammals.

Agarose particle-templated porous bacterial cellulose and its application in cartilage growth in vitro.

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a biocompatible hydrogel with a three-dimensional (3-D) structure formed by a dense network of cellulose nanofibers. A limitation of using BC for applications in tissue engineering is that the pore size of the material (∼0.02-10μm) is smaller than the dimensions of mammalian cells and prevents cells from penetrating into the material and growing into 3-D structures that mimic tissues.