The EuFooD-STA Webinar "Biofilms in food industry: structure, function and control strategies" took place 20 December 2016. You can download the pdf version of the presentation and view the recording below.
Microbial life is teeming on most surfaces of our planet. A support, water and some nutrients to microbes are sufficient to initiate the construction of real fortresses called microbial biofilms. The organic matrix, which ensures the cohesion of the biological structure, is essentially constituted by a sticky polymeric mixture. These microscopic architectures impact our daily life in several ways since they can form in natural and man-made surfaces. For the microbial roommates of the matrix, there are many benefits to community lifestyle, including on industrial equipment tolerance to antimicrobial, resistance to hydrodynamic stresses and cleaning operations The variety of survival strategies developed by these surface ecosystems is just beginning to be decrypted in the case of rudimentary model systems. Far from being mere three-dimensional assemblies of identical cells, biofilms are composed of subgroups with heterogeneous traits that are largely involved in their ecological success.
This webinar will address the following questions:
- Where can we detect natural biofilms and what do they look like under the microscope?
- How can we mimic industrial biofilms in the lab and what can we learn from them on pathogens persistency on surface?
- What are biofilm mechanisms of tolerance/resistance to antimicrobials to propose innovative control strategies.
Romain Briandet is research director at the French Micalis INRA AgroParisTech joint unit. He is leading the B2HM team specialized in surface microbiology and its impact on food quality and safety. He is also animator of the French National Biofilm Network that foster academic researchers and industrialist on biofilm questions (twitter @BiofilmsFrance). He is part of the Editorial Board for “Food Microbiology” (Elsevier), “Biofouling-The Journal of Bioadhesion and Biofilm Research” (Taylor and Francis) and Topic Editor for “Frontiers in Microbiology”. His main line of interest is to decipher the links between biofilm spatial architecture and the associate microbial functions, with special reference to pathogen persistence in the food industry. He is coauthor of 90 publications (H-index=26), 1 patent on biofilm control and he supervised 7 PhDs.
