生物膜(12)_研究历史

Perhaps because many biofilms are thick enough to be visible to the naked eye, the microbial communities were among the first to be studied by early microbiologists. Anton van Leeuwenhoek scraped the plaque biofilm from his teeth and observed what he described as the “animalculi” inside them under his primitive microscope.

Common sites of biofilm infection Once biofilm reach the bloodstream they can spread to any moist surface of the human body. Source: Center for Biofilm Engineering, Montana State University-Bozeman

一旦生物膜进入血液，它们可以扩展到人体任何湿润表面。

 

In the years which followed, researchers have concentrated primarily on planktonic (free-floating) bacteria, the kinds of microbes studied by the likes of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. It was not until the 1970s that scientists began to appreciate that bacteria in the biofilm mode of existence constitute such a major component of the bacterial biomass in most environments. In the 1980s and 1990s, scientists began to understand how elaborately organized a bacterial biofilm community can be.²

Paul Stoodley of the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University, attributes much of the lag in studying biofilms to the difficulties of working with heterogeneous 成分混杂的biofilms compared with homogeneous planktonic populations. In a 2004 paper in Nature Reviews, the molecular biologist describes many reasons why biofilms are extremely difficult to culture, such as the fact that the diffusion of liquid through a biofilm and the fluid forces acting on a biofilm must be carefully calculated if it is to be cultured correctly. According to Stoodley, the need to master such difficult laboratory techniques has deterred 阻止many scientists from attempting to work with biofilms.³

生物膜研究需要掌握大量高难度实验技能，这让许多科学家望而止步。

Although research on biofilms has surged in the last 20-30 years, the majority of biofilm research to date has focused on external biofilms, or those that form on various surfaces in our natural environment. Better tools to analyze external biofilms has realized they cause a wide range of problems in industrial environments. For example, biofilms can develop on the interiors of pipes, which can lead to clogging and corrosion. Biofilms on floors and counters can make sanitation difficult in food preparation areas.

Since biofilms have the ability to clog堵塞 pipes, watersheds流域, storage areas, and contaminate food products, large companies with facilities that are negatively impacted by their presence have naturally taken an interest in supporting biofilm research, particularly research that specifies how biofilms can be eliminated.

This means that many recent advances in biofilm detection have resulted from collaborations between microbial ecologists生态学家, environmental engineers, and mathematicians. This research has generated new analytical tools that help scientists identify biofilms.

之前，生物膜给管道堵塞，垃圾清洁，水管腐蚀带来很大困难。许多大公司有专门部门研究如何清除biofilm。在微生物生态学家，环境工程师，数学家帮助下，开发了新的工具研究生物膜。