Bacteria represent the most abundant form of life on Earth and have evolved to successfully colonize nearly every environmental niche. In doing so, bacteria predominately form multicellular communities known as biofilms, resulting in increased resilience, persistence, and emergent behaviors. Consequently, biofilms present an attractive target for engineering and synthetic biology,...
If life exists on Mars, it likely resides in a deep subsurface environment. The Martian rocky subsurface is a primary target for the search for extraterrestrial life because it offers a stable habitat for microbial life. On Earth, the continental subsurface is a key astrobiological analog for understanding what properties...
The viscoelastic properties of microbial biofilms have attracted great interests in recent years due to the ubiquity of biofilms and their wide range of industrial and municipal applications causing tremendous societal impacts. Biofilms are predominantly architected by extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) matrices composed of bacterial cells and biopolymers secreted by...