ASM Conference on Biofilms 2003

Parsek, Matthew

Abstract

The ubiquity of surface-associated microbial life, or biofilms, has long been appreciated by researchers in many fields. Biofilms have also long been known to play benign and harmful roles in many environmental, industrial, and clinical processes. Only recently though, have researchers begun to demonstrate that biofilm formation in many cases proceeds through a developmental cycle, characterized by specific expression of certain genes and proteins at different points in the cycle. Much of the initial work has been conducted in the opportunist, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, although similar studies have been conducted in a variety of organisms. This work has lead to an appreciation that only studying free-swimming bacteria can lead to a biased view of microbial life. Interest in clinically related research on biofilms has been particularly great. This is not surprising- the difficulty of eradicating biofilm bacteria with antibiotic treatment is a prime concern of medicine. Depending upon the organism, type of antimicrobial and experimental system, biofilm bacteria can be up to a thousand times more resistant to antimicrobial stress than free-swimming bacteria of the same species. Understanding the nature of the increased antimicrobial resistance is a central goal of much clinical and basic research on medically relevant biofilms today. Which infections are caused by biofilms, and how is this determination made? Unfortunately, this is a difficult question for a number of reasons. In many human infections the bacteria are difficult to access, and biofilm and planktonic growth may co-exist. Furthermore there is no definitive physiological marker of the biofilm state for a bacterium. Biofilms are an organized mode of growth; consequently this phenotype is rapidly lost when bacteria are cultured ex vivo in liquid culture. With the recent explosion of biofilm-related research in microbial biofilms, ASM is sponsoring a meeting called Biofilms 2003 to be held in Victoria, British Columbia. This meeting will allow researchers to gather and discuss their work. We request funds for this meeting and hope that NIH will support ASM in providing financial assistance.