Robert Wickham

Nanoscale Pulling of Type IV Pili Reveals Their Flexibility and Adhesion to Surfaces over Extended Lengths of the Pili

Type IV pili (T4P) are very thin protein filaments that extend from and retract into bacterial cells, allowing them to interact with and colonize a broad array of chemically diverse surfaces. The physical aspects that allow T4P to mediate adherence to many different surfaces remain unclear. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) nanoscale pulling experiments were used to measure the mechanical properties of T4P of a mutant strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 unable to retract its T4P. After adhering bacteria to the end of an AFM cantilever and approaching surfaces of mica, gold, or polystyrene, we observed adhesion of the T4P to all of the surfaces. Pulling of single and multiple T4P on retraction of the cantilever from the surfaces could be described using the worm-like chain (WLC) model. Distinct peaks in the measured distributions of the best-fit values of the persistence length Lp on two different surfaces provide strong evidence for close-packed bundling of very flexible T4P. In addition, we observed force plateaus indicating that adhesion of the T4P to both hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces occurs along extended lengths of the T4P. These data shed new light, to our knowledge, on T4P flexibility and support a low-affinity, high-avidity adhesion mechanism that mediates bacteria-surface interactions.

Simulation of nucleation dynamics at the cylinder-to-lamellar transition in a diblock copolymer melt

We examine the dynamical evolution of a stable lamellar phase nucleating from a metastable cylinder phase in a diblock copolymer melt, through large-scale simulations of the time-dependent Landau–Brazovskii model. Ellipsoidal nuclei form, whose minor axis is parallel to the cylinder axis. We use our observation of both shrinking and growing droplets to determine the critical nucleus size as a function of undercooling, and find that the critical size grows as we approach coexistence. The nucleus shape and critical size agree, near coexistence, with the predictions of an approximate theory. This supports the idea that the underlying microstructure produces an anisotropic droplet interfacial tension, and that the interplay between this interfacial tension and a reduction in bulk free-energy is central to the nucleation process. The nucleus interface moves with a time-independent velocity that depends on the interface orientation in a manner that preserves the ellipsoidal droplet shape into the late stages of growth. Near coexistence, the magnitude of the interfacial velocity varies linearly with undercooling, consistent with theoretical predictions and experimental observations.

Statistical dynamics of classical systems: a self-consistent field approach.

We develop a self-consistent field theory for particle dynamics by extremizing the functional integral representation of a microscopic Langevin equation with respect to the collective fields. Although our approach is general, here we formulate it in the context of polymer dynamics to highlight satisfying formal analogies with equilibrium self-consistent field theory. An exact treatment of the dynamics of a single chain in a mean force field emerges naturally via a functional Smoluchowski equation, while the time-dependent monomer density and mean force field are determined self-consistently. As a simple initial demonstration of the theory, leaving an application to polymer dynamics for future work, we examine the dynamics of trapped interacting Brownian particles. For binary particle mixtures, we observe the kinetics of phase separation.

Nucleation of the BCC phase from disorder in a diblock copolymer melt: Testing approximate theories through simulation

We examine nucleation of the stable body-centred-cubic (BCC) phase from the metastable uniform disordered phase in an asymmetric diblock copolymer melt. Our comprehensive, large-scale simulations of the time-dependent, mean-field Landau-Brazovskii model find that spherical droplets of the BCC phase nucleate directly from disorder. Near the order-disorder transition, the critical nucleus is large and has a classical profile, attaining the bulk BCC phase in an interior that is separated from disorder by a sharp interface. At greater undercooling, the amplitude of BCC order in the interior decreases and the nucleus interface broadens, leading to a diffuse critical nucleus. This diffuse nucleus becomes large as the simulation approaches the disordered phase spinodal. We show that our simulation follows the same nucleation pathway that Cahn and Hilliard found for an incompressible two-component fluid, across the entire metastable region. In contrast, a classical nucleation theory calculation based on the free energy of a planar interface between coexisting BCC and disordered phases agrees with simulation only in the limit of very small undercooling; we can expand this region of validity somewhat by accounting for the curvature of the droplet interface. A nucleation pathway involving a classical droplet persists, however, to deep undercooling in our simulation, but this pathway is energetically unfavourable. As a droplet grows in the simulation, its interface moves with a constant speed, and this speed is approximately proportional to the undercooling.