Multiscale Analysis of Plasma-Modified Silk Fibroin and Chitosan Films

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that biological interactions with plasma-modified silk fibroin and chitosan surfaces depend on multiscale surface features, highlighting the importance of scale-aware surface engineering for biomedical applications.

Contribution

It introduces a multiscale analysis approach to characterize surface features and their influence on biological responses, revealing scale-dependent interactions.

Findings

Bacteria and small colonies correlate with fine-scale topography.

Macrophage morphology correlates with larger-scale surface features.

Surface chemistry descriptors do not strongly predict biofilm formation.

Abstract

Biological interactions with material surfaces span a wide range of length scales, yet conventional surface measurements often fail to account for scale, limiting the insights they provide for surface engineering. Here, we investigate how multiscale surface descriptors of plasma-modified silk fibroin and chitosan surfaces modify bacterial and immune cell response. Surface chemistry and topography were characterized using X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), followed by sliding bandpass filtration and multiscale curvature tensor-based methods to measure scale-dependent topographic features. Macrophage response and biofilm growth were assessed by fluorescence microscopy. Correlation strength showed scale-dependence with respect to surface features and biological structure: individual bacteria and small colonies correlated more strongly with fine-scale topographic features, whereas macrophage morphology correlated more strongly with larger-scale surface features. Notably, measured surface chemical descriptors generally did not correlate strongly with biofilm formation; nonetheless, chitosan and silk fibroin showed distinct trends in bacterial support, suggesting that material identity was not captured by the measured surface properties and that prevention of biofilms likely benefits from combinatorial approaches as opposed to physical surface modification alone. These results show that different biological structures interact with material surfaces at distinct length scales, as well as demonstrate the utility of multiscale analysis in identifying scales of interest in biological interactions with surfaces. Moreover, the data suggests that tailoring topographic feature size to the characteristic scale of the targeted biological entity is a potential strategy for antibacterial wound-healing materials without incurring cytotoxicity.