Condensed Matter Physics and Bacteria

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Speaker(s): Gerard C. L. Wong

One of the unsolved problems in human health and disease is the control of pathogens, such as antibiotic-resistant forms of bacteria. In this talk, we will briefly describe three vignettes where physics-based approaches have been useful.

  1. Bacterial biofilms are structured multi-cellular communities that are notoriously resistant to antibiotics. By adapting algorithms from colloid physics, we translate bacteria movies into searchable databases of bacterial behavior and find new appendage-specific mechanisms for P. aeruginosa surface motility.
  2. We examine the mechanism of mammalian defensins, a prototypical family of host defense peptides, and show how we can use topology, coordination chemistry, and soft matter physics to construct a set of design rules for antimicrobials that punch holes in bacterial membranes.
  3. By using 3rd generation synchrotrons to measure the density propagator of water, we show that it is possible to make movies of hydration structure and dynamics at femtosecond timescales and sub-angstrom length scales. We use this Green’s function method to explore water dynamics in confined geometries.

Colloquium

Junior and senior physics majors attend our biweekly colloquium series, held on Tuesday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. in Shanahan B460. The talks are open to all students and to the public, and are frequently attended by scientists from the other Claremont Colleges, Cal Poly Pomona, and others. The series features speakers from a broad range of institutions and fields of physics.