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...lex three-dimensional structure and depth of E. coli biofilms. Downloaded from Bacterial biofilms have been described as sessile bacterial communities that live attached to each other and to surfaces =-=(2, 3, 4, 5, 10)-=-. In natural settings, many bacterial species live predominantly in these communities, with a smaller portion of the bacterial population subsisting as free-swimming (planktonic) organisms (10). In ad...

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...l distribution of species and the function of species within communities which are characterized both by various cell-cell interactions (13) and by pronounced architectural and chemical heterogeneity =-=(7, 10, 33)-=-. Since a rigorous biomass disaggregation step is a common feature of all traditional cultivationbased microbiological approaches used for analysis of complex microbial communities, spatial informatio...

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...ly interacting with each other and, in most cases, supported by an abiotic surface (7). Biofilms can become hundreds of micrometers in depth and display complex structural and functional architecture =-=(8, 28, 40)-=-. Bacteria growing as a biofilm develop significant phenotypical, biochemical, and morphological differences from their planktonic counterparts. In particular, cells growing in biofilm are extremely r...

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...366 EPS Building, Bozeman, MT 59717. Phone: (406) 994-4906. Fax: (406) 994-6098. E-mail: Anne_c @erc.montana.edu. In the vast majority of ecosystems, microbial cells grow in association with surfaces =-=(9, 10, 11, 12)-=-. Surface-associated growth leads to the formation of a biofilm, a highly structured, sessile microbial community (30). The formation of a mature biofilm is believed to occur in a sequential process o...

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...n of sorbed solute, and the effect of diffusion. Here it is assumed that only the dissolved solute is transported. By using the isotherm, equation 7 can be written @εw 1 ~1 2 εw!k# ]C ]t 5 De ]2C ]z2 =-=(8)-=- Boundary and initial conditions for this problem are identical to those for the preceding case; that is, equations 2 through 4 apply. The assumption of reversibility requires that the time scale for ...

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...ssion Due to its ubiquity in nature and tendency to form biofilms, P. aeruginosa hassbeen used as a model organism for studying biofilm behavior and for the development of biofilm control strategies (=-=Costerton et al., 1994-=-). Though recent progress has beenssignificant, P. aeruginosa biofilm cell physiology is still only poorly understood.sGradients in metabolic activity have been shown to exist in P. aeruginosa biofilm...

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...ture, where biofilms consist of cell aggregates or microcolonies embedded in exopolysaccharide matrices. Microcolonies are interspersed with voids and water channels, making the biofilm heterogeneous =-=(11)-=-. Liquid flow in such channels has been demonstrated (41), indicating that molecular diffusion is not the only process governing mass transport in biofilms. In fact, DeBeer et al. (12) showed that the...

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...ntaining DNA in solution, for example, is a convenient laboratory procedure for transformation assays, but it represents only poorly the environmental situations in which cells often grow in biofilms =-=(5)-=-. Even E. coli was recently shown to be able to establish itself in biofilms in a chemostat model of a water distribution system (31) or in a biofilm in association with another bacterium in a continu...