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Generation of a reproducible nutrient‐depleted biofilm of Escherichia coli and Burkholderia cepacia
Author(s) -
Bühler T.,
Ballestero S.,
Desai M.,
Brown M.R.W.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
journal of applied microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.889
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1365-2672
pISSN - 1364-5072
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2672.1998.853501.x
Subject(s) - burkholderia , microbiology and biotechnology , biofilm , escherichia coli , enterobacteriaceae , biology , chemistry , bacteria , biochemistry , genetics , gene
An in vitro method of growing bacteria as a defined nutrient‐depleted biofilm is proposed. The medium was defined nutritionally in terms of the quantitative composition and by the total amount of nutrient required to achieve a defined population size. Escherichia coli and Burkholderia cepacia were incubated on a filter support placed on a defined volume of solid medium. The change of biomass of the biofilm population was compared with the change in a planktonic culture. The size of the population in stationary phase was proportional to the concentration of limiting substrate up to 40 μmol cm −2 glucose for E. coli and up to 2·7 × 10 −9 mol cm −2 iron for B. cepacia . Escherichia coli growing exponentially had a growth rate of μ = 0·30 h −1 in a biofilm and μ = 0·96 h −1 in planktonic culture. The growth rate, μ, for exponentially growing B. cepacia in a biofilm was 1·12 h −1 and in planktonic culture 0·78 h −1 . This method allows the limitation of the size of a biofilm population to a chosen value.