We’re going to Space !!

NSF and CASIS funded our new Germicidal Ultraviolet Light Biofilm Inhibition (GULBI) project with a team from ASU (Westerhoff, Nickerson, Barrila, Perreault), Texas State University (McLean) and BioServe.

This project is supported through a joint NSF mechanism involving the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, the entity responsible for managing the International Space Station (ISS) National Lab, to exploit nanoscale interactions studies to support applications on Earth. Experiments will study effects of germicidal UV light on inhibition of biofilms in water systems using five bacterial species, called FAB5, that are (or potentially) present in biofilms in ISS water systems. First, the Germicidal Ultraviolet Light Biofilm Inhibition experiments on ISS will demonstrate impacts of germicidal light on biofilm formation on materials relevant to those used in ISS water systems and its feasibility as a chemical-free, long-duration biofilm control strategy in an extreme environment (microgravity) compared against otherwise identical ground controls on Earth. The influence of microgravity is important to understand since the growth and final density of some bacteria, and associated biofilm formation, can differ in microgravity, as compared to earth gravity. Second, experiments in a water-filled reactor equipped with SEOF decorated using different types of NPs will be operated under earth-gravity to study effects of two mechanisms (photolysis versus oxidation) to mitigate biofilm formation. State of the art nanomaterial, chemical and biological methods and models will be applied to study biofilms.

Bacterial growth and accumulation on surfaces as biofilm communities occurs in aquatic, terrestrial, industrial, medical and even microgravity (spaceflight) environments. Biofilms can adversely impact water quality or engineering operations. Chemical strategies to control biofilms require transport, storage and feeding of solutions that pose their own human, engineering or ecological dangers. These issues can be reduced by applying nanotechnology-enabled strategies that directly convert electricity into germicidal light and/or in-situ produced reactive oxygen species (ROS). The goal of this project is to understand how utilizing two nanoparticle (NP) properties (light scattering and photocatalysis) influences the ability of ultraviolet (UV) light, delivered by unique side-emitting optical fibers (SEOFs) attached to light emitting diodes (LEDs) that generate germicidal light, to prevent biofilm formation.