{"id":3866,"date":"2011-03-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpdev.hmc.edu\/physics\/2011\/03\/08\/condensed-matter-physics-and-bacteria\/"},"modified":"2011-03-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T00:00:00","slug":"condensed-matter-physics-and-bacteria","status":"publish","type":"physics_colloquium","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/research\/colloquium\/condensed-matter-physics-and-bacteria\/","title":{"rendered":"Condensed Matter Physics and Bacteria"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"page-featured-image\" class=\"wp-block-image is-style-alignleft\" data-pic=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/22\/2023\/01\/\" alt=\"Promotional image for talk: Elements of a successful scientific talk\" data-pic=\"\" \/><\/figure>\n<p><strong>Speaker(s):<\/strong> Gerard C. L. Wong<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>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 <i>P. aeruginosa<\/i> surface motility.<\/li>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>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&rsquo;s function method to explore water dynamics in confined geometries.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-3866","physics_colloquium","type-physics_colloquium","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/physics_colloquium\/3866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/physics_colloquium"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/physics_colloquium"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/physics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}