The Society for Mathematical Biology Annual Meeting and Conference, July 25-28, 2012
SMB 2012 Minisymposia
MS2: Modeling, simulation, and validation of the biomechanics of microbial communities - July 25, 9:40-11:20 a.m. SESSION A
Organizer: David Bortz (Applied Mathematics, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA)
Presenters: Jason Hammond, Sarthok Sircar, Ranga Sudarsan, Scott Van Epps
Summary. Multicellular microbial communities are ubiquitous, yet the biomechanics of surface-attached (biofilms) and suspended (flocculated) colonies are still not well understood. Recently, many researchers have investigated the viscous and elastic properties of the surrounding polysaccharides. Validated models for the viscoelasticity and shear-induced fragmentations would substantially improve our control of biofouling in blood-borne bacterial infections, fermentation bioreactors, and wastewater treatment plants. This minisymposium will showcase current directions of research in advanced simulation (immersed boundary methods), analysis (multiscale analysis), and validation (statistical design of particle sizer and confocal microscopy) techniques to better understand community-fluid interactions and the resulting separations.
