Characterization of the metabolic production of marine biofilms. Towards an application to the study of complex biofilms in situ
Supervisors: CULIOLI Gérald, ORTALO-MAGNE Annick
Abstract
The phenomenon of biofouling is a natural process that impacts all the surfaces submerged in the marine environment, generating major economic and ecological problems on a global scale. It is induced by the formation of marine biofilms corresponding to the colonization of submerged surfaces by bacteria organizing in communities by surrounding themselves with a matrix of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). The objective of this work is the use and development of methodologies to study and understand the precursor stage of this phenomenon. The correlation of the data collected from the applied methods (metabolomics and molecular network, proteomics, colorimetric assays, microscopies, spectroscopy) allows a multi-scale approach for the characterization of biofilms. These developments aim, first of all, to characterize the overall biochemical production of in vitro biofilms and then analyse natural biofilms formed in situ. The use of this wide range of techniques has made it possible to answer certain scientific questions such as the impact of nutrients (phosphates), an enzyme (quorum sensing) or hydrodynamics on the nature of formed biofilms.
Keywords
Metabolomics; molecular networks; multi-omic analysis; marine biofilms, EPS
