#Spore formation free#

For example, in some cases bacteria in biofilms can be up to 1000 times more resistant to antibiotic treatment than the same cells growing planktonically. Biofilms also allow infecting bacteria to resist antimicrobial therapy. Biofilms facilitate infection by enhancing attachment to host tissue and resisting host defenses, including the immune system. Relatively well understood examples include the roles of biofilms in recurrent urogenital infection caused by Escherichia coli, lung infections due to Pseudomonas aeruginosa in cystic fibrosis patients and chronic ear infections (otitis media) often caused by a variety of bacteria –. In fact, biofilms can be important to pathogenesis and the resulting disease.

Biofilm formation also appears to be common during bacterial infection. Most likely, in natural environments, the biofilm is the most common growth form. These differences, in combination with the specialized extracellular molecules may endow the biofilm with the ability to survive diverse environmental stresses. Cells in the biofilm can differ from those grown in planktonic culture in physiology, gene expression and morphology. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.īiofilms are organized communities of cells, often but not always on a surface (either natural or abiotic), encased in an extracellular matrix composed of polysaccharide, protein and/or extracellular DNA (eDNA), depending on the species and growth conditions. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: Adam Driks is an Academic Editor for PLoS ONE. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.įunding: This work was funded by grants from the Falk Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (R21AI097934) to A.D.

#Spore formation free#

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. Received: JAccepted: JanuPublished: January 30, 2014 PLoS ONE 9(1):Įditor: Peter Setlow, University of Connecticut, United States of America (2014) Spore Formation and Toxin Production in Clostridium difficile Biofilms. difficile cells and spores in biofilms have specialized properties that may facilitate infection.Ĭitation: Semenyuk EG, Laning ML, Foley J, Johnston PF, Knight KL, Gerding DN, et al. Finally, we showed that biofilm cells possess 100-fold greater resistance to the antibiotic metronidazole then do cells cultured in liquid media. In 14 day-old biofilms, relatively few spores are surrounded by the apparent cell debris, and the surface-associated granules are present at higher density at the coat surface. However, after 6 days, material that resembles cell debris in the matrix surrounds the spore, and darkly staining granules are closely associated with the spores surface. Transmission electron microscopy revealed that in 3 day-old biofilms, the outermost structure of the spore is a lightly staining coat. Spores in biofilms also had reduced germination efficiency compared to spores obtained by a conventional sporulation protocol.

Apart from strains 630 and VPI10463, which sporulated in the biofilm at relatively low frequencies, the frequencies of biofilm sporulation varied between 46 and 65%, suggesting that variations in sporulation levels among strains is unlikely to be a major factor in variation in the severity of disease. All the strains we analyzed formed spores. We also found that extracellular DNA (eDNA), polysaccharide and protein was readily detected in the matrix of all strains, including the major toxins A and/or B, in toxigenic strains. We found that biofilms readily formed in all strains analyzed, and that spores were abundant within about 6 days. To better characterize biofilm formation in the pathogen Clostridium difficile, we established a colony biofilm culture method for this organism on a polycarbonate filter, and analyzed the matrix and the cells in biofilms from a variety of clinical isolates over several days of biofilm culture. The ability to grow as a biofilm can facilitate survival of bacteria in the environment and promote infection.