About the Authors

Che-Chi Shu

Affiliation School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University, Indiana, United States of America

Anushree Chatterjee

Affiliation Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, United States of America

Gary Dunny

Affiliation Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, United States of America

Wei-Shou Hu

Affiliation Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, United States of America

Doraiswami Ramkrishna

ramkrish@purdue.edu

Affiliation School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University, Indiana, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Wrote the paper: AC WSH DR. Designed and guided project directions, advised on modeling hypotheses, read and approved final version of manuscript: GD WSH. Analyzed data and formulated model hypotheses, derivations and computations: CCS DR.