FORCE SPECTROSCOPY OF MINERAL-MICROBE BONDS - Life at the Nanoscale: Atomic Force Microscopy of Live Cells - page 306

or medical. AFM is a powerful tool, arguably the only tool that can be used
to probe forces and bonds between living cells and mineral surfaces. This
chapter provides an overview of papers that explore mineral-microbe forces
and bonds. This chapter also highlights the use of AFM to study interactions
between iron-reducing bacteria and Fe(III)-containing minerals. With 10 30
prokaryotes on Earth,

there is plenty left to be explored. Future directions
might include such things as the use of molecular dynamic simulations to
corroborate experimentally measured force spectra,

1

or the development
of force-based models of ligand-receptor pairs to compliment structural-
based models determined with x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic
resonance.

52

53,54

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation
and the U.S. Department of Energy.

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