Abstract
Understanding the molecular mechanisms of bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation is an important topic in current microbiology and a key in nanomedicine for developing new antibacterial strategies. There is growing evidence that the production of extracellular polymeric substances at the cell-substrate interface plays a key role in strengthening bacterial adhesion. Yet, because these adhesive polymers are available in small amounts and are localized at interfaces, they are difficult to study using traditional techniques. Here, we use single-molecule atomic force microscopy (AFM) to functionally analyze the biophysical properties (distribution, adhesion, and extension) of bacterial footprints, that is, adhesive macromolecules left on substrate surfaces after removal of the attached cells. We focus on the large adhesin protein LapA from Pseudomonas fluorescens, which mediates cell attachment to a wide diversity of surfaces. Using AFM tips functionalized with specific antibodies, we demonstrate that adhesion of bacteria to hydrophobic substrates leads to the active accumulation of the LapA protein at the cell-substrate interface. We show that single LapA proteins left on the substrate after cell detachment localize into microscale domains corresponding to the bacterial size and exhibit multiple adhesion peaks reflecting the adhesion and extension of adsorbed LapA proteins. The mechanical behavior of LapA-based footprints makes them ideally suited to function as multipurpose bridging polymers, enabling P. fluorescens to attach to various surfaces. Our experiments show that single-molecule AFM offers promising prospects for characterizing the biophysics and dynamics of the cell-substrate interface in the context of bacterial adhesion, on a scale that was not accessible before.