Shear redistribution in confined biofilm systems: decoupling structure and function in engineered water environments
6 affiliations
- 1School of Water Conservancy and Transportation, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China
- 2College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China
- 3School of environment and civil engineering, Dongguan university of technology, Dongguan, China
- 4Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of River and Lake Ecology, School of Ecology and Environment, Inner Mongolia University, Hohhot, China
- 5College of Land Resources and Surveying & Mapping, Shandong Agricultural and Engineering University, Jinan, China
- 6Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ USA
Abstract
Biofilms in engineered water systems often develop within confined, tortuous flow paths where shear stress is spatially heterogeneous. However, biofilm responses are commonly evaluated using bulk metrics that treat shear as uniform and externally imposed, overlooking how geometric confinement redistributes shear during biofilm growth. Here, we examined how confinement-driven shear redistribution governs biofilm–hydrodynamic interactions in labyrinth microchannels under constant pressure. By integrating time-resolved biofilm-altered geometries with flow simulations, we show that localized biofilm accumulation reorganizes preferential flow pathways, redistributes wall shear stress, and causes a disproportionate decline in discharge. Hydraulic deterioration was increasingly governed by constriction of the remaining effective flow paths rather than by biomass accumulation alone, revealing nonlinear hydraulic sensitivity to spatially localized growth. Controlled-shear experiments further showed that ATP-based physiological indicators remained comparatively stable and peaked at intermediate shear levels, whereas extracellular polymeric substance composition shifted toward higher protein-to-polysaccharide ratios with increasing shear. Together, these results demonstrate a partial decoupling between biofilm structure and activity-related or matrix-compositional indicators under confinement-generated shear redistribution, highlighting the limitations of bulk structural metrics for predicting biofilm behavior and hydraulic performance.
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BibTeX
@article{hou2026shear,
title = {{Shear redistribution in confined biofilm systems: decoupling structure and function in engineered water environments}},
author = {Peng Hou and Lei Li and Zeyuan Liu and Jie Tao and Tahir Muhammad and Yayu Wang and Hu Hu and Chao Zang and Yang Xiao and Bruce E. Rittmann},
journal = {NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1038/s41522-026-01082-9},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41522-026-01082-9},
note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Shear redistribution in confined biofilm systems: decoupling structure and function in engineered water environments
AU - Peng Hou
AU - Lei Li
AU - Zeyuan Liu
AU - Jie Tao
AU - Tahir Muhammad
AU - Yayu Wang
AU - Hu Hu
AU - Chao Zang
AU - Yang Xiao
AU - Bruce E. Rittmann
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/04
JO - NPJ Biofilms and Microbiomes
DO - 10.1038/s41522-026-01082-9
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41522-026-01082-9
AB - Biofilms in engineered water systems often develop within confined, tortuous flow paths where shear stress is spatially heterogeneous. However, biofilm responses are commonly evaluated using bulk metrics that treat shear as uniform and externally imposed, overlooking how geometric confinement redistributes shear during biofilm growth. Here, we examined how confinement-driven shear redistribution governs biofilm–hydrodynamic interactions in labyrinth microchannels under constant pressure. By integrating time-resolved biofilm-altered geometries with flow simulations, we show that localized biofilm accumulation reorganizes preferential flow pathways, redistributes wall shear stress, and causes a disproportionate decline in discharge. Hydraulic deterioration was increasingly governed by constriction of the remaining effective flow paths rather than by biomass accumulation alone, revealing nonlinear hydraulic sensitivity to spatially localized growth. Controlled-shear experiments further showed that ATP-based physiological indicators remained comparatively stable and peaked at intermediate shear levels, whereas extracellular polymeric substance composition shifted toward higher protein-to-polysaccharide ratios with increasing shear. Together, these results demonstrate a partial decoupling between biofilm structure and activity-related or matrix-compositional indicators under confinement-generated shear redistribution, highlighting the limitations of bulk structural metrics for predicting biofilm behavior and hydraulic performance.
SN - 2055-5008
ER -