Combined utilization of metabolic inhibitors to prevent synergistic multi-species biofilm formation

Biofilm is ubiquitous in industrial water systems, causing biofouling and leading to heat transfer efficiency decreases. In particular, multi-species living in biofilms could boost biomass production and enhance treatment resistance. In this study, a total of 37 bacterial strains were isolated from a cooling tower biofilm where acetic acid and propionic acid were detected as the main carbon sources. These isolates mainly belonged to Proteobacteria and Firmicutes, which occupied more than 80% of the total strains according to the 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Four species (Acinetobacter sp. CTS3, Corynebacterium sp. CTS5, Providencia sp. CTS12, and Pseudomonas sp. CTS17) were observed co-existing in the synthetic medium. Quantitative comparison of biofilm biomass from mono- and multi-species showed a synergistic effect towards biofilm formation among these four species. Three metabolic inhibitors (sulfathiazole, 3-bromopyruvic acid, and 3-nitropropionic acid) were employed to prevent biofilm formation based on their inhibitory effect on corresponding metabolic pathways. All of them displayed evident inhibition profiles to biofilm formation. Notably, combining these three inhibitors possessed a remarkable ability to block the multi-species biofilm development with lower concentrations, suggesting an enhanced effect appeared in simultaneous use. This study demonstrates that combined utilization of metabolic inhibitors is an alternative strategy to prevent multi-species biofilm formation. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13568-022-01363-4.