Subramanian Sowmya, Huiszoon Ryan C, Chu Sangwook, Bentley William E, Ghodssi Reza
MEMS Sensors and Actuators Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Biofilm. 2019 Dec 18;2:100015. doi: 10.1016/j.bioflm.2019.100015. eCollection 2020 Dec.
Biofilms are the primary cause of clinical bacterial infections and are impervious to typical amounts of antibiotics, necessitating very high doses for elimination. Therefore, it is imperative to have suitable methods for characterization to develop novel methods of treatment that can complement or replace existing approaches using significantly lower doses of antibiotics. This review presents some of the current developments in microsystems for characterization and sensing of bacterial biofilms. Initially, we review current standards for studying biofilms that are based on invasive and destructive end-point biofilm characterization. Additionally, biofilm formation and growth is extremely sensitive to various growth and environmental parameters that cause large variability in biofilms between repeated experiments, making it very difficult to compare experimental repeats and characterize the temporal characteristics of these organisms. To address these challenges, recent developments in the field have moved toward systems and miniature devices that can aid in the non-invasive characterization of bacterial biofilms. Our review focuses on several types of microsystems for biofilm evaluation including optical, electrochemical, and mechanical systems. This review will show how these devices can lead to better understanding of the physiology and function of these communities of bacteria, which can eventually lead to the development of novel treatments that do not rely on high-dosage antibiotics.
生物膜是临床细菌感染的主要原因，对常规剂量的抗生素具有抗性，需要非常高的剂量才能消除。因此，必须有合适的表征方法来开发新的治疗方法，这些方法可以补充或替代使用低得多剂量抗生素的现有方法。本文综述了用于表征和检测细菌生物膜的微系统的一些当前进展。首先，我们回顾了基于侵入性和破坏性终点生物膜表征的生物膜研究现行标准。此外，生物膜的形成和生长对各种生长和环境参数极为敏感，这些参数会导致重复实验之间的生物膜存在很大差异，使得比较实验重复结果和表征这些生物体的时间特征变得非常困难。为应对这些挑战，该领域的最新进展已转向能够辅助对细菌生物膜进行非侵入性表征的系统和微型设备。我们的综述重点关注用于生物膜评估的几种类型的微系统，包括光学、电化学和机械系统。本文综述将展示这些设备如何能够更好地理解这些细菌群落的生理学和功能，最终可能导致开发不依赖高剂量抗生素的新疗法。
