title: Diffusive transport through a model host-biofilm system.
abstract: Free-living biofilms have been subject to considerable attention, and basic physical principles for them are generally accepted. Many host-biofilm systems, however, consist of heterogeneous mixtures of aggregates of microbes intermixed with host material and are much less studied. Here we analyze a key property, namely reactive depletion, in such systems and argue that two regimes are possible: (1) a homogenizable mixture of biofilm and host that in important ways acts effectively like a homogeneous macrobiofilm and (2) a distribution of separated microbiofilms within the host with independent local microenvironments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: A C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Aristotelous
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.|Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Klapper
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Grabovsky
authors.affiliation: Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pabst
authors.affiliation: Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pitts
authors.affiliation: Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, USA.
authors.forename: P S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Stewart
mesh_terms: D018441:Biofilms; D004058:Diffusion; D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal; D008954:Models, Biological; D013211:Staphylococcus aureus / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D049452:Green Fluorescent Proteins