Goulian, Mark

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Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Microbial Nanoculture as an Artificial Microniche
    (2016-08-01) Niepa, Tagbo H. R; Hou, Likai; Goulian, Mark; Jiang, Hongyuan; Koo, Hyun; Lee, Daeyeon; Stebe, Kathleen J
    Microbes self-organize in microcolonies while transitioning to a sessile form within a protective biofilm matrix. To enable the detailed study of microbial dynamics within these microcolonies, new sessile culture systems are needed that sequester cells and mimic their complex growth conditions and interactions. We present a new nanoliter-scale sessile culture system that is easily implemented via microfluidics-enabled fabrication. Hundreds of thousands of these nanocultures can be easily generated and imaged using conventional or confocal microscopy. Each nanoculture begins as a several nanoliter droplet of suspended cells, encapsulated by a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane. The PDMS shell provides long-lasting mechanical support, enabling long term study, and is selectively permeable to small molecules including antibiotics, signaling molecules and functional fluorescent probes. Thus, as microcolonies mature within the nanocultures, they can be stressed or interrogated using selected probes to characterize cell physiological properties, antibiotic susceptibilities, and antagonistic interactions. We demonstrate this platform by investigating broad ranges of microcolony dynamics, including direct and indirect bacterial-fungal interactions. This versatile new tool has broad potential for addressing biological questions associated with drug resistance, chronic infections, microbiome dynamics, and antibiotic discovery.
  • Publication
    Fluctuations and Rheology in Active Bacterial Suspensions
    (2007-10-03) Chen, Daniel T.N.; Lau, Andy C.W.; Hough, Lawrence A.; Goulian, Mark; Islam, Mohammad F.; Lubensky, Thomas C; Yodh, Arjun G
    We probe nonequilibrium properties of an active bacterial bath through measurements of correlations of passive tracer particles and the response function of a driven, optically trapped tracer. These measurements demonstrate violation of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and enable us to extract the power spectrum of the active stress fluctuations. In some cases, we observe 1/√w scaling in the noise spectrum which we show can be derived from a theoretical model incorporating coupled stress, orientation, and concentration fluctuations of the bacteria.