Chemical Engineering Seminar

Abstract: Microbial communities often inhabit crowded, polymer-rich environments such as biofilms, mucus, and infected tissues. In these settings, depletion interactions—entropic forces arising from excluded volume effects—drive microbes and their viruses to spontaneously self-organize in ways that profoundly impact community structure, stress tolerance, and infection dynamics.

We investigate how physical forces, independent of microbial activity, orchestrate the assembly of multicellular structures, influence interspecies interactions, and reshape host-pathogen relationships. Our findings reveal that depletion interactions promote ordered aggregation, modulate material properties of biological environments, and govern competitive outcomes within microbial populations.

By recognizing crowding and physical self-organization as core principles of microbial ecology, we gain new insights into how microbial communities form, persist, and evolve in both natural and clinical settings.

Bio: Dr. Patrick Secor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology at Montana State University and a faculty member of the Center for Biofilm Engineering. His research explores how physical forces shape microbial community structure, antibiotic tolerance, and infection outcomes. In addition to uncovering how host and microbial polymers drive bacterial aggregation, Dr. Secor's team studies how bacteriophages that infect bacterial pathogens influence bacterial virulence potential, host immune responses, and disease progression. He earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology at Montana State University and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Washington. His research is supported by the NIH and other agencies, which has led to new insights into the development of phage-based strategies to combat bacterial infections.