Mechanobiology: how mechanics regulate life

Questions selected for this week:

1. Could mechanical stress be manipulated to weaken other bacterial systems beyond the CusCBA?
2. How can you explain the decrease in the diffusion constant of mobile CusA as the pressure difference across the cell is increasing? (Figure 2D)
3. What are the mechanical factors that lead to changes in cell morphology during extrusion loading?
4. Why is the interaction with copper or silver toxic to E.coli ? 
5. How might the sensitivity of bacterial efflux systems to mechanical stress be exploited in developing new antimicrobial therapies ?
6. The article highlights the efflux complex CusCBA in E. coli. Is this efflux system present in other bacteria, and does it serve a similar purpose of resisting metal toxicity in those organisms? Or do different bacteria have their own unique efflux complexes with varying roles?
7. This study demonstrated how mechanical stress influences the disassembly of the CusCBA complex, however, I was wondering if such mechanical forces may have some impacts on the mobility and fluidity of the cell lipid membrane. Given that alterations in membrane integrity could potentially reduce bacterial resistance to copper and silver toxicity, might this factor introduce bias into the study’s conclusions?
8. What are the advantages of using the proposed microfluidic device over micropipette aspiration in studying bacterial mechanobiology? 
9. Why does octahedral shear stress, rather than hydrostatic pressure, affect the assembly of bacterial protein complexes?
10. What are the main differences between Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, and why couldn’t we observe Gram-positive bacteria in the research as well?