Space- and Time-resolved Simulations of Processes in Biofilm Systems on a Microscale

Summary

New experimental and analytical techniques such as confocal laser scanning microscopy (CSLM) or the use of RNA-targeted probes have provided insight into the morphology, architecture, and function of biofilm cultures. The different observations made there suggest that more attention has to be paid to a detailed study of microscale processes such as flow and transport phenomena as well as to the development of the biofilm’s primary components, i.e., microbial cells and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). For that, numerical simulations are a promising approach. However, due to the large variety of different effects and influence factors, strong multiscale characteristics with respect to both time and space, and the need for an explicit high spatial resolution in order to capture the occurring changes of the underlying geometry because of biomass growth 3D simulations have hardly been tackled so far. Actually, most existing simulation tools for biofilm systems are based on strongly simplified model assumptions that have turned out to be not valid in general.