High-contrast Brillouin and Raman micro-spectroscopy for simultaneous mechanical and chemical investigation of microbial biofilms

•We present the potential of a new Brillouin-Raman spectroscopic setup to study the chemico-mechanical properties of biofilms•Variations of viscoelasticity between cells and species can be studied and related to molecular specificity•Local softening is found, corresponding to residual hydration water and to the presence of extracellular polymeric substance

Mechanical mapping with chemical specificity of biological samples is now made possible by joint micro-Brillouin and micro-Raman measurements. In this work, thanks to the unprecedented contrast of a new tandem Fabry-Perot interferometer, we demonstrate simultaneous detection of Brillouin and Raman spectra from different Candida biofilms. Our proof-of-concept study reveals the potential of this label-free joint micro-spectroscopy technique in challenging microbiological issues. In particular, heterogeneous chemo-mechanical maps of Candida biofilms are obtained, without the need for staining or touching the sample. The correlative Raman and Brillouin investigation evidences the role of both extracellular polymeric substances and of hydration water in inducing a marked local softening of the biofilm.

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