A majority of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in the United States are associated with biofilms. Nanoscale biophysical measures are increasingly revealing that adhesive and viscoelastic properties of bacteria play essential roles across multiple stages of biofilm development. Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) applied to strains with variation in antimicrobial resistance enables new opport...

Use of the atomic force microscope (AFM) in quantitative force measurements inherently requires a theoretical framework enabling conversion of the observed deflection properties of the cantilever to an interaction force. In this paper, the theoretical foundations of using frequency modulation atomic force microscopy (FM-AFM) in quantitative force measurements are examined and rigorously elucida...

Atomic force microscopy applications extend across a number of fields; however, limitations have reduced its effectiveness in live cell analysis. This report discusses the use of AFM to evaluate the three-dimensional (3-D) architecture of living chick dorsal root ganglia and sympathetic ganglia. These data sets were compared to similar images acquired with confocal laser scanning microscopy of ...

Bacteria can possess an outermost assembly of polysaccharide molecules, a capsule, which is attached to their cell wall. We have used two complementary, high-resolution microscopy techniques, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), to study bacterial capsules of four different gram-negative bacterial strains: Escherichia coli K30, Pseudomonas aeruginosa FRD1, S...

Bacillus spore surface morphology was imaged with atomic force microscopy (AFM) to determine if characteristic surface features could be used to distinguish between four closely related species; Bacillus anthracis Sterne strain, Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki, Bacillus cereus strain 569, and Bacillus globigii var. niger. AFM surface height images showed an irregular topography across the ...

Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) is a widely used tool to study cell mechanics. Current AFM setups perform high-throughput probing of living cells, generating large amounts of force-indentations curves that are subsequently analysed using a contact-mechanics model. Here we present several algorithms to detect the contact point in force-indentation curves, a crucial step to achieve fully-automated ...

We present a graphical method for a unifying, quantitative analysis of molecular bonding-force measurements by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The method is applied to interpreting a range of phenomena commonly observed in the experimental AFM measurements of noncovalent, weak bonds between biological macromolecules. The analysis suggests an energy landscape underlying the intermolecular force a...

For years, chaotic phenomena have been mainly studied from a theoretical point of view. In the last two decades, considerable developments have occurred in the control, prediction and observation of chaotic behaviour in a wide variety of dynamical systems, and a large number of applications have been discovered and reported (Moon & Holmes, 1999; Endo & Chua, 1991; Kennedy, 1993). Chaotic behavi...

BACKGROUND Although significant advances have been made toward understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the effect of propofol on tumor cell metastasis, less is known regarding how cell membrane and cytoskeletal ultrastructure are affected in this process. Here, we investigated the relationship between cell morphology and cell size, which are features mainly defined by the cytoskeleton...

Today’s research laboratory is required to solve difficult problems that span multiple disciplines. Advanced techniques are required to answer pressing questions related to adhesion, bonding, contamination and surface cleanliness, corrosion, surface morphology, surface roughness, surface topography, failure analysis, process monitoring, surface chemistry, biological characterization, local surf...