LIPTO · When bacteria meet fats: the physics of bacterial ordering, surface deformation and gene activity

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Project objective

Bacteria constituting the gut microbiome play a crucial role metabolizing dietary fats. How these bacteria physically interact with these fats is unknown. LIPTO will provide direct visual insight into this process and translate them into quantitative, predictive tools. LIPTO hypothesizes that topological defects created by dense bacterial biofilms act as physical and metabolical hotspots. It will pursue three integrated objectives. O1 quantifies how gut-relevant bacteria remodel oil droplets under controlled conditions. Using anaerobic microfluidic chips and live confocal imaging, it will measure attachment, growth and interface deformation (area and curvature change) while extracting orientation fields to locate nematic order and defects. O2 tests whether mechanical states map to transcriptional states. A microfluidics-compatible smFISH panel targeting lipid metabolism, stress responses and surface sensing will read out gene expression directly inside structured biofilms, allowing a cell-resolved comparison of defect-rich and smooth regions. O3 develops computational models that link bacterial alignment, curvature, and stress to lipid access, validating them against the movies and gene data and releasing open code and datasets.The project is firmly interdisciplinary combining soft-matter physics, microfluidics, quantitative imaging and spatial omics, with expert supervision at Sorbonne Université and collaborations in active-matter theory. Results will advance fundamental understanding of living interfaces and generate reusable methods for analyzing bacterial biofilm mechanics. Societally, the work informs microbiome strategies for dietary lipid control, aligning with Horizon Europe Cluster 1 and SDG 3 (health and well-being). Training spans advanced imaging, transcriptomics, modeling, and a non-academic placement (NAP) focused on valorisation.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• SORBONNE UNIVERSITE · ParisCoordinatorFrance

Links

• View on CORDIS
• DOI: 10.3030/101278052