Molecular Communications Pulse-Based Jamming Model for Bacterial Biofilm Suppression

Abstract

Studies have recently shown that the bacteria survivability within biofilms is responsible for the emergence of superbugs. The combat of bacterial infections, without enhancing its resistance to antibiotics, includes the use of nanoparticles to quench the quorum sensing of these biofilm-forming bacteria. Several sequential and parallel multi-stage communication processes are involved in the formation of biofilms. In this paper, we use proteomic data from a wet lab experiment to identify the communication channels that are vital to these processes. We also identified the main proteins from each channel and propose the use of jamming signals from synthetically engineered bacteria to suppress the production of those proteins. This biocompatible technique is based on synthetic biology and enables the inhibition of biofilm formation. We analyze the communications performance of the jamming process by evaluating the path loss for a number of conditions that include different engineered bacterial population sizes, distances between the populations, and molecular signal power. Our results show that sufficient molecular pulse-based jamming signals are able to prevent the biofilm formation by creating lossy communications channels (almost -3 dB for certain scenarios). From these results, we define the main design parameters to develop a fully operational bacteria-based jamming system.

Transmitter and Receiver Architectures for Molecular Communications: A Survey on Physical Design With Modulation, Coding, and Detection Techniques

“…In this respect, in the context of MC among bacterial networks, quorum sensing has been proposed as a means to achieve synchronization among the nodes of the network [102], as well as a tool for power amplification of MC signals, increasing the range of transmitted signals [103]. Instead of utilizing quorum sensing to improve MC, Martins et al [104] proposed quorum jamming to suppress the intrinsic quorum networking of a bacterial network with the aim of preventing them to form biofilms. This idea has possible applications in fighting infectious diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria, where the jamming signals can be delivered to the infectious population via the use of genetically engineered bacteria.…”

Molecular Communications in Viral Infections Research: Modeling, Experimental Data, and Future Directions

“…There are already some interesting works of how molecular communications and experimental data can be integrated into different scenarios and for different applications. For example, models with experimental data can be found for calcium signalling [94] , [95] , bacteria communication [15] , [96] , [97] , neural communication [98] , and macro particle diffusion [72] , [99] . Other works have made great usage of experimental data, such as data extracted from open source databases and integrated into their Molecular Communication models, and examples include works in [100] , [101] .…”

“…However, the literature on molecular communications does not provide a wide range of work that tackles the issue of viral infection as a whole. Even though there are models for molecular communications for bacterial infection [15] , [16] , there have not been any surveys proposed for molecular communications models of viral infections. To date, molecular communications models for viral infection includes multi-hop transfer of genetic content through diffusion over extracellular channels [17] , viral propagation in the air [18] , [19] , propagation within the respiratory tract [20] , as well as interactions with host cells [21] .…”

Microfluidic-based Bacterial Molecular Computing on a Chip

“…, for 0 ≤ t ≤ t p . (10) By using the value of the parameter rr , the electrochemical sensor would define whether the threshold should be adjusted or not. Therefore, rr,g < 0.5, r1 will be increased rr,g ≥ 0.5, r1 will be maintained.…”

“…Bacteria signalling processes have been used in the design of engineered nanoscale biological systems for performing logic computations [7]- [11]. Such engineered signalling processes can tune the computing operation accuracy and this builds on a new communications theory paradigm known as Molecular Communications [10]- [16]. The characterization and design of artificial communication systems built from biological components found in nature is the main goal for Molecular Communications systems.…”