Publications by Alice Cont | EPFL Graph Search

Biofilm morphogenesis on soft hydrogels

Bacteria often colonize their environment in the form of surface attached multicellular communities called biofilms. Biofilms grow from surface-attached cells that undergo division while self-embedding in a viscoelastic matrix. Biofilms grow at the surface ...

EPFL2023

Material Substrate Physical Properties Control Pseudomonas aeruginosa Biofilm Architecture

Alice Cont, Alexandre Louis André Persat

The biofilm lifestyle is the most widespread survival strategy in the bacterial world. Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms cause chronic infections and are highly recalcitrant to antimicrobials. The genetic requirements allowing P. aeruginosa to grow into biof ...

AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY2023

Monodisperse Selectively Permeable Hydrogel Capsules Made from Single Emulsion Drops

Huachuan Du, Esther Amstad, Alice Cont, Mathias Steinacher, Alexandre Louis André Persat

Capsules are often used to protect chemical and biological entities from the environment, to control the timing and location of their release, or to facilitate the collection of waste. Their performance depends on the thickness and composition of their she ...

2021

Biofilms deform soft surfaces and disrupt epithelia

Tamara Rossy, Alice Cont, Alexandre Louis André Persat

During chronic infections and in microbiota, bacteria predominantly colonize their hosts as multicellular structures called biofilms. A common assumption is that biofilms exclusively interact with their hosts biochemically. However, the contributions of me ...

2020

Complete inclusion of bioactive molecules and particles in polydimethylsiloxane: a straightforward process under mild conditions

Alice Cont, Elaheh Zare Eelanjegh, Erik Mailand, René M. Rossi

By applying a slow curing process, we show that biomolecules can be incorporated via a simple process as liquid stable phases inside a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix. The process is carried out under mild conditions with regards to temperature, pH and ...

Springer Nature2019

Fabrication of Hexagonal-Prismatic Granular Hydrogel Sheets

Huachuan Du, Esther Amstad, Alice Cont, Mathias Steinacher

Natural soft materials are often composed of proteins that self-assemble into well-defined structures and display mechanical properties that cannot be matched by manmade materials. These materials are frequently mimicked with hydrogels whose mechanical pro ...

2018