Bacterial Extracellular Polysaccharides Involved in Biofilm Formation

By B. Vu, Miao Chen, R. Crawford, Elena P. Ivanova. Molecules, 2009

1,103 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) produced by microorganisms are a complex mixture of biopolymers primarily consisting of polysaccharides, as well as proteins, nucleic acids, lipids and humic substances. EPS make up the intercellular space of microbial aggregates and form the structure and architecture of the biofilm matrix. The key functions of EPS comprise the mediation of the initial attachment of cells to different substrata and protection against environmental stress and dehydration. The aim of this review is to present a summary of the current status of the research into the role of EPS in bacterial attachment followed by biofilm formation. The latter has a profound impact on an array of biomedical, biotechnology and industrial fields including pharmaceutical and surgical applications, food engineering, bioremediation and biohydrometallurgy. The diverse structural variations of EPS produced by bacteria of different taxonomic lineages, together with examples of biotechnological applications, are discussed. Finally, a range of novel techniques that can be used in studies involving biofilm-specific polysaccharides is discussed.

Subfields: Ecology, Molecular Biology, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12863e64825bb970ed6717566610cd321ae20ec2

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Citations in the corpus

• Water Conservation and Plant Survival Strategies of Rhizobacteria under Drought Stress (2020, background): “Using PGPR may help in reducing the use of chemical fertilizers or increase the nutrient-use efficiencies, particularly for low-mobility nutrients such as iron and phosphorus [176,177].”
• Copper Metallurgical Slags – Current Knowledge and Fate: A Review (2015, background): “The quantity and quality of EPS in biofilms is often variable in different environmental conditions (Vu et al., 2009).”
• Extracellular polymeric substances of bacteria and their potential environmental applications. (2014, background): “The homopolysaccharides are generally neutral and composed of only one monosaccharide type such as Dglucose or L-fructose (Czaczyk andMyszk, 2007; Pal and Paul, 2008; Sutherland, 2001; Vu et al., 2009).”