Bacterial biofilms formation at air liquid interfaces

Abstract

Bacterial biofilms have great significance for food industry as spoilage agents and for wastewater and contaminated biological treatments. To date most attention has focused on biofilms formed from the colonization of solid-liquid or solid-air interfaces. The colonization of the interface between air and liquid, which can be selectively advantageous for aerobic or facultative aerobic bacteria, has been rarely studied. In this work the ability of the Bacillus subtilis ATCC
19659, Bacillus cereus ATCC 10876 and Pseudomonas fluorescens ATCC 13525 to form biofilms at the interface between air and liquid (pellicle) in medium with different composition were investigated. The ability of commercial strains of bacteria to generate biofilms under different experimental conditions for a total period of 9 days at 25°C and 37°C was studied. The results in this article indicate that tested bacterial strains can form monospecies or mixed biofilms and can behave physiologically different in biofilm formation.