Biofilm formation in Streptococcus pneumoniae

Biofilm is a structured community of cells adhered to the surface or to each other and surrounded by extracellular matrix. Biofilm is fomed in several steps starting from single cells adhered to the surface up to microcolonies linked by channels. Because of a higher resistance to antibiotics the current hot topics in the biofilm research are formation of biofilms on medical materials and treatment of bacterial infections associated with biofilms. This work is focused on a biofilm forming bacteria Streptococcus pneumoniae. It is a potentially pathogenic bacterium which colonizes the upper respiratory tract and causes a number of diseases. Biofilms formed by S. pneumoniae exhibit increased resistance to antibiotics, therefore, alternative antimicrobial agents have been recently studied. For biofilm formation studies both open and closed systems are used. The flow cell and biofilm reactors represent commonly used open systems. Closed cultivation systems are for example a Calgary biofilm device and a micro titer plate-system developed by Christensen et al