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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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Autor principal: Millo, Diego
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: WILEY-VCH Verlag 2015
Materias:
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
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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.
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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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