Quorum sensing (QS) mimickers can be used as an effective tool to disrupt
biofilms which consist of communicating bacteria and extracellular polymeric
substances. In this paper, a stochastic biofilm disruption model based on the
usage of QS mimickers is proposed. A chemical reaction network (CRN) involving
four different states is employed to model the biological processes during the
biofilm formation and its disruption via QS mimickers. In addition, a
state-based stochastic simulation algorithm is proposed to simulate this CRN.
The proposed model is validated by the in vitro experimental results of
Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm and its disruption by rosmarinic acid as the QS
mimicker. Our results show that there is an uncertainty in state transitions
due to the effect of the randomness in the CRN. In addition to the QS
activation threshold, the presented work demonstrates that there are underlying
two more thresholds for the disruption of EPS and bacteria, which provides a
realistic modeling for biofilm disruption with QS mimickers.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Molecular,
Biological, and Multi-Scale Communication