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Transactions of the IMF
The International Journal of Surface Engineering and Coatings
Volume 100, 2022 - Issue 4
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Research Article

Biofilms formed on metallic materials by E. coli and S. epidermidis and their evaluation by crystal violet staining and its reflection

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Pages 200-207 | Received 24 Feb 2022, Accepted 04 Apr 2022, Published online: 05 May 2022
 

ABSTRACT

Bacteria form biofilms by attaching to materials. The formed biofilm has various influences on daily life and industry, positively or negatively. Therefore, the biofilm should be observed and controlled in an appropriate manner. There are numerous developed methods to evaluate biofilms. However, many of them have been not appropriate from the viewpoint of industrial application since they are difficult to be handled and the associated pieces of equipment are very expensive. Therefore, in this study, the authors focused on staining methods to evaluate biofilms. Crystal violet is well known to stain negatively charged parts of polymeric substances, such as polysaccharides and other polar polymers. Thus, the amount and contents were expected to evaluate reliably. In this study, the authors compared Raman shifts and colour measurements for biofilms formed on four metallic materials by Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus epidermidis. It could be confirmed that staining by crystal violet could predict the amounts of biofilms, and the contents ratio (particularly the contents of polysaccharides) to some extent.

Acknowledgement

We appreciate the Advanced Technology R&D Center of Mitsubishi Electric Co., Japan Food Research Laboratories (JFRL) and The Society of International Sustaining Growth for Antimicrobial Articles (SIAA) for much useful advice and information. This paper is based on a presentation given by the authors at Interfinish2020 on-line, 6–8 September 2021, organised by The Surface Finishing Society of Japan, co-organised by Nagoya University and supported by the International Union for Surface Finishing (IUSF)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grant Number 20K05185 and 21K12739). Part of this work was supported by the GEAR 5.0 Project of the National Institute of Technology (KOSEN) in Japan.

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