Biofilms in Bioengineering

It is a natural tendency of micro-organisms to attach to surfaces, to multiply and to embed themselves in a slimy matrix, resulting in biofilms. Biofilms constitute a protected growth modality that allows the micro-organisms to survive in hostile environments. Biofilm science is a relatively new technical discipline, which has emerged in response to the need of methodologies for biofilm control. Biofilms represent an interdisciplinary research area focused on the understanding and modulating of the combination of biological and chemical reactions, as well as in transport and interfacial transfer processes, that potentially affect the microbial accumulation and activity on abiotic and biotic surfaces. Research on biofilms has progressed rapidly in the last decade. Due to the fact that biofilms have required the development of new analytical tools, many recent advances have resulted from collaborations between biologists, engineers and mathematicians. The scientific community has come to understand many things about the particular biology of microbial biofilms through a variety of microscopic, physical, chemical, and molecular techniques of study. This book provides a remarkable amount of knowledge on the processes that regulate biofilm formation; on the methods used for their formation, monitoring, characterisation and mathematical modelling; on the problems caused by their presence in the food industry, environment and medical fields; and describes the current and emergent strategies for their control. The information in this book is designed to be of use to researchers and engineers working on fundamental aspects of biofilm formation and control and also to be helpful in conducting biofilm studies and in the consistent interpretation of results.