Meeting Abstract
Bacteria are highly social organisms that produce surface-bound communities, termed biofilms, which are embedded in a secreted matrix of extracellular polymers. The matrix is well known to confer protection from physical forces and other threats, but its role in the dynamics of community assembly is just being uncovered. To shed light on this problem I have developed an experimental system using the pathogen Vibrio cholerae, for which biofilm formation is essential to environmental survival and pathogenesis in human hosts. Here I will present a collection of findings on how the extracellular matrix influences competition for space and resources within biofilms, and how the matrix controls the community assembly of biofilms as they develop from single cells to complex multicellular populations. The results have implications for the evolution of pathogenesis, bacterial cooperation and competition, as well the the nature of ecological succession within microbial communities.
