Les Mardis de la Chimie | "Jacques Fattaccioli "Bacteria on high fat diets cooperate to stay fit"

BACTERIA ON HIGH FAT DIETS COOPERATE TO STAY FIT

Jacques Fattaccioli

During the consumption of alkanes, Alcanivorax borkumensis, a bacteria commonly found in oil spill areas, form a biofilm around oil droplets to consume them. The role this plays during degradation remains unclear. Using in-situ microfluidic tracking, we identify a shift in biofilm morphology that depends on adaptation to oil consumption : longer exposure leads to the appearance of dendritic biofilms optimized for oil consumption effected through tubulation of the interface at localized defects in the interfacial cell ordering. To capture the full phenomenology, we developed a model that elucidates biofilm morphology, linking tubulation to decreased interfacial tension and increased cell hydrophobicity.

Biography – Jacques Fattaccioli is associate professor (i.e. Maître de conférences) at Sorbonne Université since 2009. His research takes place at the laboratoire PASTEUR (CNRS UMR 8640) of the Department of Chemistry of ENS and at the Institut Pierre-Gilles de Gennes. Jacques Fattaccioli is an experimentalist with a strong background in soft matter science and microtechnologies, fond of interdisciplinarity and methodological developments. Primarily focused on the design of functional fluid microparticles to be used as biophysical tools to understand the mechanobiology of immune
cells, his research is now exploring environmental questions related to phosphate uptake by microalgae or oil bioremediation by marine bacteria.