ArticleACS applied materials & interfaces2018
Bacterial Adhesion Is Affected by the Thickness and Stiffness of Poly(ethylene glycol) Hydrogels.
Article in ACS applied materials & interfaces, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 128 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Bacterial growth in poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogel with nutrients and indicator.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Surface materials and biofilm formation affect tropodithietic acid biosynthesis gene expression inSustainable microbiology · 2026Article
- Photodegradable Hydrogel Matrices for Spatiotemporal Control of Bacteria Transport and Delivery.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2025Article
- Magnetically Tunable Hydrogel for Biofilm Control.ACS applied bio materials · 2025Article
- Advancements and Challenges in Modeling Mechanobiology in Intestinal Host-Microbiota Interaction.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2025Review
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- Antifouling Activity of Bottlebrush Network Hydrogels.ACS applied bio materials · 2025Article
- Bacterial Adhesion on Soft Surfaces: The Dual Role of Substrate Stiffness and Bacterial Growth Stage.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Biocompatible EDOT-Pyrrole Conjugated Conductive Polymer Coating for Augmenting Cell Attachment, Activity, and Differentiation.ACS applied bio materials · 2025Article
- Light-sensitive PEG hydrogel with antibacterial performance for pacemaker pocket infection prevention.Materials today. Bio · 2024Article
- Fractional Factorial Design to Evaluate the Synthesis and Electrochemical Transfer Parameters of h-BN Coatings.Nanomaterials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Stiffness and Oligomer Content Affect the Initial Adhesion ofACS applied materials & interfaces · 2023Article
- Synthesis and Characterization of Durable Antibiofilm and Antiviral Silane-Phosphonium Thin Coatings for Medical and Agricultural Applications.ACS omega · 2023Article
- Mechanobiology as a tool for addressing the genotype-to-phenotype problem in microbiology.Biophysics reviews · 2023Review
- Effect of surface stiffness in initial adhesion of oral microorganisms under various environmental conditions.Colloids and surfaces. B, Biointerfaces · 2023Article
- Microbial Adherence to Contact Lenses andPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Multifunctional Composite Hydrogels for Bacterial Capture, Growth/Elimination, and Sensing Applications.ACS applied materials & interfaces · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Despite lacking visual, auditory, and olfactory perception, bacteria sense and attach to surfaces. Many factors, including the chemistry, topography, and mechanical properties of a surface, are known to alter bacterial attachment, and in this study, using a library of nine protein-resistant poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) hydrogels immobilized on glass slides, we demonstrate that the thickness or amount of polymer concentration also matters. Hydrated atomic force microscopy and rheological measurements corroborated that thin (15 μm), medium (40 μm), and thick (150 μm) PEG hydrogels possessed Young's moduli in three distinct regimes, soft (20 kPa), intermediate (300 kPa), and stiff (1000 kPa). The attachment of two diverse bacteria, flagellated Gram-negative Escherichia coli and nonmotile Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus was assessed after a 24 h incubation on the nine PEG hydrogels. On the thickest PEG hydrogels (150 μm), E. coli and S. aureus attachment increased with increasing hydrogel stiffness. However, when the hydrogel's thickness was reduced to 15 μm, a substantially greater adhesion of E. coli and S. aureus was observed. Twelve times fewer S. aureus and eight times fewer E. coli adhered to thin-soft hydrogels than to thick-soft hydrogels. Although a full mechanism to explain this behavior is beyond the scope of this article, we suggest that because the Young's moduli of thin-soft and thick-soft hydrogels were statistically equivalent, potentially, the very stiff underlying glass slide was causing the thin-soft hydrogels to feel stiffer to the bacteria. These findings suggest a key takeaway design rule; to optimize fouling-resistance, hydrogel coatings should be thick and soft.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.