PROPOSAL NO.: CTS-0514443 PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: M. WU INSTITUTION: CORNELL UNIVERSITY
SGER: From Tracking Rising Air Bubbles to Swimming E-coli Cells.
The goal of the proposed research effort is study the motion of bubbles in biological fluid systems. The PI proposes to coat air bubbles with a newly developed fluorescent surfactant, and monitor the surfactant concentration at bubble surface and the bubble motion simultaneously. This study will reveal the inter play among contaminants at the bubble surface, bubble shape oscillations and bubble motion. Another goal is to extend the capability of the 3-D imaging technique from tracking rising air bubbles of a few millimeters in diameter to fluorescent particles of a few microns in diameter. The intellectual merit of the proposed project resides in its capacity to study the complex spatial and temporal dynamics of swimming E. coli cells in three dimensions. Such capability opens up new opportunities for studying transport properties, chemotactic behavior as well as social behavior of swimming E. coli cells.
In terms of broader impacts, the imaging technique developed in the proposed project can be readily adapted in the future to study other more complex problems, such as community behavior (e.g. chemotaxis or quorum sensing) in bacterial cells. Graduate and undergraduate students will be trained at the forefront of the interdisciplinary research in biology, fluid mechanics and physics. Considerations of gender and ethnic diversity will be important with a goal of incorporating women and under represented groups in the project. With respect to K-12 outreach, this project lends itself easily to the preparation of a classroom project to visualize cells and air bubbles that will be exported to rural classrooms through the Main Street Science program at Cornell's NSF-funded Nanobiotechnology Center.
