drug design and bioengineering laboratory

The most important problem faced by the marine industry is biofouling, all man-made surfaces under aquatic environment will get fouled by the settlement of marine flora and fauna. In this process a complex community of microorganism is attached on the surface first which is covered ubiquitously with biological macromolecules such as carbohydrate and proteins called as a microfouling or biofilm formation. They were common on all the surfaces both in aquatic and terrestrial environment where the material experience a series of discrete physical, chemical and biological events result in the complex layer of attached organisms known as biofouling followed by the attachment of macro foulants such as barnacle, hydroides, algae bryozoans, mussels, polychaetes etc...,

The objectives of my present study are to access the stability, biodegradability and change in the physiochemical properties of the six polymers under marine environment conditions by characterizing the biofilm, microfoulant and macrfoulant associated in this process. and studying the biodiversity of microorganism present on the polymer substrate.