ChemBE Spring 2021 Seminar Series presents Sujit Datta

Description

Sujit Datta, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University, will present the Corrsin Memorial Lecture entitled "Life in a Tight Spot — How Bacteria Swim in Complex Spaces" for the Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.

Please attend the event by using the Zoom link.

Abstract:

Bacterial motility is central to processes in agriculture, the environment, and medicine. While motility is typically studied in bulk liquid or on flat surfaces, many bacterial habitats — e.g., soils, sediments, and biological gels/tissues — are complex porous media. Here, we use studies of E. coli in transparent 3D porous media to demonstrate how confinement in a heterogenous medium fundamentally alters motility. In particular, we show how the paradigm of run-and-tumble motility is dramatically altered by porescale confinement, both for cells performing undirected motion and those performing chemotaxis, directed motion in response to a chemical stimulus. Our porous media also enable precisely structured multi-cellular communities to be 3D printed. Using this capability, we show how spatial variations in the ability of cells to perform chemotaxis enable populations to autonomously stabilize large-scale perturbations in their overall morphology. Together, our work thus reveals new principles to predict and control the behavior of bacteria, and active matter in general, in complex environments.