On-line and in-situ kinetics studies of biofilm formation on solid marine submerged substrata by contact angle wettability and microscopic techniques

Monitoring of Marine Biofilm Formation Dynamics at Submerged Solid Surfaces With Multitechnique Sensors

“…In the previous marine biofilm wettability studies), dynamics of the selected parameters variability, for samples registered in the short-time marine biofilm formation interval (to 80 min. ), is depicted in Figures 3A-D of Pogorzelski and Szczepanska (2014). The particular biofilm development stages can be identified.…”

“…From the previous work (Pogorzelski and Szczepanska, 2014), the CA wettability sensor appeared to be effective in in-situ and continuously biofilm formation studies and was used here simultaneously with a fluorescence-based microscopy technique. The experimental methodology and data evaluation procedure was adapted after (Fischer et al, 2014) to identify the known phases of biofilm development and to determine the specific growth rates µ, and the conditioning or induction times λ, where Gomperts sigmoidal function was selected to describe a specimen growth curve (Zwietering et al, 1990).…”

“…As a reference, the trophic state of water body was determined from chemical analyses according to the following parameters: pH, dissolved O 2 , phosphate, nitrite, nitrate, ammonium concentrations, and further correlated to the determined biofilm characterizing parameters by means of Spearman's rank correlation procedure. Biofilm adhesive surface properties (surface free energy, work of adhesion) were obtained with the contact angle hysteresis (CAH) approach using an automatic captive bubble solid surface wettability sensor assigned for in-situ, on-line, and quasi-continuous measurements of permanently submerged samples (Pogorzelski et al, 2013;Pogorzelski and Szczepanska, 2014). From confocal reflection microscopy (COCRM) data, characteristic biofilm structural signatures such as biovolume, substratum coverage fraction, area to volume ratio, spatial heterogeneity, mean thickness, and roughness) were determined at different stages of microbial colony development.…”