Abstract
Biofilms are assemblages of microorganisms and their associated
extracellular products at an interface and typically with an abiotic or
biotic surface. The study of the morphology of biofilms is important
because they are associated with processes of biofouling, corrosion,
catalysis, pollutant transformation, dental caries, drug resistance, and
so forth. In the literature, biofilms have been examined by atomic force
microscopy (AFM), which has proven to be a potent tool to study
different aspects of the biofilm development on solid surfaces. In this
work, we used AFM to investigate topographical changes during the
development process of Enterococcus faecalis biofilms, which were
generated on sterile cellulose nitrate membrane (CNM) filters in brain
heart infusion (BHI) broth agar blood plates after 24, 36, 72, 192, and
360 h. AFM height images showed topographical changes due to biofilm
development, which were used to characterize several aspects of the
bacterial surface, such as the presence of extracellular polymeric
substance, and the biofilm development stage. Changes in the development
stage of the biofilm were shown to correlate with changes in the surface
roughness as quantified through the mean roughness.
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