Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.
DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.
Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are an important health issue around the world. The consequences of HAIs incidence include prolonged hospital stays, increased resistance of microorganisms to antimicrobials, higher costs for health systems and for t ...
Microorganisms aggregated into matrix-enclosed biofilms dominate microbial life in most natural, engineered, and medical systems. Despite this, the ecological adaptations and metabolic trade-offs of the formation of complex biofilms are currently poorly un ...
There is a need for coatings for biomedical devices and implants that can prevent the attachment of fungal pathogens while allowing human cells and tissue to appose without cytotoxicity. Here, the authors study whether a poly(2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate) (P ...
Natural competence enables bacteria to take up exogenous DNA. The evolutionary function of natural competence remains controversial, as imported DNA can act as a source of substrates or can be integrated into the genome. Exogenous homologous DNA can also b ...
Bacterial communities attached to surfaces under fluid flow represent a widespread lifestyle of the microbial world. Through shear stress generation and molecular transport regulation, hydrodynamics conveys effects that are very different by nature but str ...
Benthic (streambed) biofilms metabolize a substantial fraction of particulate organic matter and nutrient inputs to streams. These microbial communities comprise a significant proportion of overall biomass in headwater streams, and they present a primary c ...
Changes in the riparian vegetation along stream channels, diurnal light availability, and longitudinal fluctuations in the local light regime in streams influence primary production and carbon (C) cycling in benthic stream biofilms. To investigate the infl ...
Rod-shaped bacteria typically grow first via sporadic and dispersed elongation along their lateral walls and then via a combination of zonal elongation and constriction at the division site to form the poles of daughter cells. Although constriction compris ...
Consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) of lignocellulosic feedstocks to platform chemicals requires complex metabolic processes, which are commonly executed by single genetically engineered microorganisms. Alternatively, synthetic consortia can be employed to co ...
Persistent cells, representing a small fraction of a bacterial population, are refractory to antibiotic therapy. It is a phenotypic transient state. The underlying mechanisms of persistence remain largely unknown, but even divergent hypotheses agree on a f ...