A Distinguishable Role of eDNA in the Viscoelastic Relaxation of Biofilms

Abstract

The protection offered by biofilms to organisms that inhabit it against chemical and mechanical stresses is due in part to its matrix of extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) in which biofilm organisms embed themselves. Mechanical stresses lead to deformation and possible detachment of biofilm organisms, and hence, rearrangement processes occur in a biofilm to relieve it from these stresses. Maxwell analysis of stress relaxation allows the determination of characteristic relaxation time constants, but the biofilm components and matrix constituents associated with different stress relaxation processes have never been identified. Here we grew biofilms with different matrix constituents and used principal-component analysis to reveal that the presence of water and soluble polysaccharides, together with the absence of bacteria, is associated with the fastest relaxation, while other EPSs control a second, slower relaxation. Extracellular DNA, as a matrix constituent, had a distinguishable role with its own unique principal component in stress relaxation with a time constant range between those of other EPSs.