NSF Award
0623870
ABSTRACT<br/>Proposal Number: CTS-0623870 <br/>Principal Investigator: Wolgemuth, Charles W.<br/>Affiliation: University of Connecticut Health Center<br/>Proposal Title: SGER: A two-phase fluid model of prokaryotic collective swimming <br/><br/>This proposal suggests the development of a two-phase fluid model to describe the<br/>pseudo-turbulent behavior that arises in dense colonies of swimming bacteria. When large populations of bacteria collectively swim, many interesting fluid flows can be generated and these counter-flows produce feedback on the swimming behavior of the bacteria. Therefore,<br/>studying the coupling between collective swimming of bacteria and the associated hydrodynamics will lead to a more complete understanding of colony development in<br/>large populations of swimming micro-organisms, such as can arise during biofilm formation.<br/>Recent experiments on dense populations of swimming Bacillus subtilis have revealed a volume fraction-dependent transition from random swimming to transient jet and vortex patterns in the bacteria/fluid mixture. This proposal will develop a model that treats the<br/>swimming bacteria as one phase of a multi-phase fluid and the surrounding water as a<br/>second-phase. <br/><br/>Intellectual merit: Even modest progress will greatly increase our understanding of<br/>the multiphase fluid dynamics that arises in bacterial populations, which will have<br/>consequences for other important areas of bacterial behavior such as biofilm formation.<br/>In addition, this project may provide new insights for nano- and micron-scale mixing,<br/>which could be applicable for chemical reactor applications. The project is intrinsically<br/>inter-disciplinary, drawing on ideas from fluid mechanics, applied mathematics, soft<br/>condensed matter physics, and biology.<br/><br/> Broader impact: The results will be broadly disseminated at interdisciplinary<br/>conferences and in interdisciplinary journals. In addition, the PI will teach methods and<br/>results from this project in an interdisciplinary upper level undergraduate/graduate class<br/>that he has developed entitled. An Introduction to Biophysics, which is cross-listed<br/>between biomedical engineering, physics, mathematics, and molecular and cellular<br/>biology. This course is taught between the Health Center campus and the main campus<br/>of the University of Connecticut.
