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An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms
The study of electroactive microbial biofilms often requires knowledge of the biofilm thickness. Unfortunately, this parameter is, nowadays, only accessible through expensive microscopic techniques. This work overcomes this limitation by presenting a new strategy, exploiting the use of chronoamperom...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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WILEY-VCH Verlag
2015
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964880/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27525209 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/celc.201402425 |
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author | Millo, Diego |
author_facet | Millo, Diego |
author_sort | Millo, Diego |
collection | PubMed |
description | The study of electroactive microbial biofilms often requires knowledge of the biofilm thickness. Unfortunately, this parameter is, nowadays, only accessible through expensive microscopic techniques. This work overcomes this limitation by presenting a new strategy, exploiting the use of chronoamperometry (CA) alone. A mixed-culture biofilm is exposed to an O(2)-saturated solution during anode respiration to suppress its catalytic activity. Assuming that inactivation of the electrocatalytic process is caused by O(2) diffusion through the biofilm, a simple relation allows the use of the time constant extracted from the fitting of the curve of the CA trace during inactivation for the straightforward and quantitative determination of biofilm thickness. The biofilm thickness obtained with this method obeys the expected trend reported for biofilm growth and is in agreement with optical measurements. Contrary to the techniques usually employed to determine biofilm thickness, this new strategy is very rapid, nondisruptive, inexpensive, and may become a convenient alternative with respect to expensive and time-consuming microscopic techniques. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4964880 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | WILEY-VCH Verlag |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49648802016-08-11 An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms Millo, Diego ChemElectroChem Articles The study of electroactive microbial biofilms often requires knowledge of the biofilm thickness. Unfortunately, this parameter is, nowadays, only accessible through expensive microscopic techniques. This work overcomes this limitation by presenting a new strategy, exploiting the use of chronoamperometry (CA) alone. A mixed-culture biofilm is exposed to an O(2)-saturated solution during anode respiration to suppress its catalytic activity. Assuming that inactivation of the electrocatalytic process is caused by O(2) diffusion through the biofilm, a simple relation allows the use of the time constant extracted from the fitting of the curve of the CA trace during inactivation for the straightforward and quantitative determination of biofilm thickness. The biofilm thickness obtained with this method obeys the expected trend reported for biofilm growth and is in agreement with optical measurements. Contrary to the techniques usually employed to determine biofilm thickness, this new strategy is very rapid, nondisruptive, inexpensive, and may become a convenient alternative with respect to expensive and time-consuming microscopic techniques. WILEY-VCH Verlag 2015-02-11 2015-01-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4964880/ /pubmed/27525209 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/celc.201402425 Text en © 2015 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ © 2015 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
spellingShingle | Articles Millo, Diego An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms |
title | An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms |
title_full | An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms |
title_fullStr | An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms |
title_full_unstemmed | An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms |
title_short | An Electrochemical Strategy to Measure the Thickness of Electroactive Microbial Biofilms |
title_sort | electrochemical strategy to measure the thickness of electroactive microbial biofilms |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964880/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27525209 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/celc.201402425 |
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