Dental News - Biofilm research could help advance dentistry

Dental Tribune International

Thu. 11. January 2018

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MUNICH, Germany: According to experts, biofilms are generally regarded as a problem to be eradicated due to the threats they pose to humans and materials. However, new research out of Germany suggests that communities of algae, fungi or bacteria possess interesting properties from both a scientific and technical perspective. These properties could result in the improved creation of structural templates, including materials for teeth.

All natural materials (whether wood, bone, mother of pearl or teeth) have been optimised by evolution over millions of years, based on the principle of adapted stability with the lowest possible weight where nature provides the blueprints for many technical developments. However, reverse-engineering replicas cannot reproduce the structural complexity of the original material in nature.

“In nature, we find many materials with properties that artificial materials are unable to replicate in the exact same fashion,” said Prof. Cordt Zollfrank, who, together with his team, researches basic scientific principles for the development of new materials at the Chair of Biogenic Polymers at the TUM Campus Straubing for Biotechnology and Sustainability.

Zollfrank and his team of researchers have now presented a series of procedures in biology that use light, heat, specially-prepared substrates and other stimuli to guide the direction of the movement of microorganisms along very specific paths. “These biological findings for controlling microbes via targeted stimuli will shape the future of material research,” said Zollfrank. According to the paper, the findings make it possible to create tailor-made templates for new materials with natural structures from the microbes themselves, or their secretions. “With our article, we want to show the direction this journey will take us in the field of biologically inspired material science,” Zollfrank continued.

Following on from the paper, and as part of a Reinhart Koselleck project of the German Research Foundation (DFG), scientists are already using the technology to a certain point. Taking advantage of the special properties of red algae, which secrete chains from sugar molecules and whose direction of movement depends on exposure to light, scientists are projecting light patterns that change into the growing medium of the algae over time—using them to create long, fine polymer threads that serve as customised templates for the manufacturing of functional ceramics.

The paper, titled “A perspective on bio-mediated material structuring” was published on 27 November in the Advanced Materials journal.