What is it about?

Planktonic bacteria tend to move toward material surfaces in oligotrophic environments, since carbon compounds as nutrients exist there. The bacterial movement is called chemotaxis and is driven by the existence of nutrients on material surfaces. The nutrients on material surfaces are called "conditioning films". At the beginning stage of research activities about the phenomenon, it was partly hypothetical due to a lack of high-accuracy direct observation methods. However, the recent development of instrumental analyses enables researchers to observe the existence and behaviors of "conditioning film" in situ. In this chapter, the historical development of measurement and theoretical aspects for conditioning film are surveyed. Then, some advanced analytical techniques and examples of their applications will be introduced.

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Why is it important?

Conditioning films are the pre-biofilim formation stage, but it seems to be very hard to confirm the conditioning film experimentally. Probably, that is the reason why there have bee not so many papers dealing with the topic so far. However, this step is very important to control biofilm. If you could control conditioning films from the viewpoint of materials science, it would be a new industrial technology which will be used in industries.

Perspectives

I would say that the formation of condition films might depend on materials. For some materials, condition films might be hard to form, while others might be not. I expect such an approach will appear in the future much more.

Professor Hideyuki Kanematsu
National Institute of Technology, Suzuka College

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This page is a summary of: Conditioning Films, January 2015, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-14565-5_2.
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