Biofilm Matrix

Dr. Courtney Reichhardt is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research program leverages her unique multidisciplinary training to answer important questions about the fundamental biophysical principles of biofilm assembly.Dr. Reichhardt graduated from Montana State University with a BS in Chemistry in 2010. She then attended Stanford University where she joined Lynette Cegelski’s laboratory in the Department of Chemistry. There she pioneered the development of a novel approach that integrates solid-state NMR and electron microscopy analyses to quantitate the composition of biofilms. Her graduate research was supported by the Althouse Family Stanford Graduate Fellowship, and she earned her PhD in Chemistry in 2016.To expand her skill set, Dr. Reichhardt opted to do her postdoctoral training in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington with Matthew Parsek.There she studied the protective intermolecular interactions in the biofilm matrix of the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa that allow for persistence in environments like those that it encounters during chronic cystic fibrosis lung infections. Her postdoctoral research was supported by several fellowships, and she was awarded two postdoc-to-faculty transition fellowships: a K99/R00 “Pathway to Independence” Award from the NIH (NIGMS) and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s Postdoc-to-Faculty Award.

• Chapter 1: The Biofilm Blueprint: Exopolysaccharide Form and Function in Bacterial Biofilms.- Chapter 2: Nucleic acids in the biofilm matrix.- Chapter 3: The Matrix Proteome: Protein Actors in the Extracellular Bacterial Biofilm.– Chapter 4: Functional amyloids as key biofilm matrix components.– Chapter 5: Structures of fibrillar adhesins that mediate bacteria-host interactions and biofilm formation.– Chapter 6: The role of matrix components in multispecies coexistence in biofilms.– Chapter 7: Cellulose and cellulose secretion in bacterial biofilms.– Chapter 8: Viscoelasticity of the biofilm matrix.– Chapter 9: Unraveling the biofilm matrix for targeted treatment strategies.– Chapter 10: Unraveling the complexity: Biofilms and their interaction with myeloid immune cell.– Chapter 11: Biofilm Dispersion and the Matrix.– Chapter 12: Experimental approaches for studying the biofilm matrix.