Cell adhesion and biofilm formation analysis

Abstract

Cell adhesion to surfaces and ulterior biofilm formation are critical processes in microbial development since living in biofilms is the preferred way of life within microorganisms. These processes are known to influence not only microorganisms development in the environment, but also their participation in biotechnological processes and have been the focus of intense research that as a matter of fact, was mainly directed to the bacterial domain. Archaea also adhere to surfaces and have been shown forming biofilms, but studies performed until present did not exploit the diversity of methods probed to be useful along bacterial biofilm research. An experimental setup is described here with the aim of stimulating archaeal biofilm research. It can be used for studying cell adhesion and biofilm formation under controlled flow conditions and allows performing in situ optical microscopy (phase contrast, fluorescence or confocal) and/or spectroscopic techniques (UV-Vis, IR or Raman) to determine structural and functional biofilm features and their evolution in time. Variants are described with specific aims as working in anaerobiosis and allow sampling of biological material along time.