COLLEGE STATION, Texas, August 11, 2009 – Two faculty members from Texas A&M University’s Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering have been awarded a $900,000 R01 grant by the National Institutes of Health for research aimed at rewiring the regulatory machinery of bacterial cells in order to control biofilm formation.
In a shift from previous studies that have sought to eradicate biofilms, Thomas Wood, professor, and Arul Jayaraman, assistant professor, are working to utilize the benefits of biofilm formation for engineering purposes and to inhibit them for medical applications. They aim to control biofilm formation and virulence genes through manipulation of signal regulators. Their model system includes E. coli, which in the United States is responsible for eight million annual trips to physicians, Wood says.
If the formation of multi-species biofilms can be controlled, Wood says, then these techniques may be used for applications ranging from reducing corrosion to novel treatments for the 80 percent of bacterial infections that occur in biofilms where antibiotics are often ineffective.
