How tall do the biofilm structures get to be?
The structures are highly variable, again, depending on the type of the organism and the type of environment that they’re growing in, but these biofilms can be hundreds of micrometers thick, and those towers could be all the way from the base of the biofilm up to the surface. So it’s highly variable but they can be quite substantial. Why do some bacteria break away and again form flagella? What tends to happen later on in biofilm development is that areas within that biofilm become nutrient depleted or there’s waste product accumulation or something else that makes it less conducive for those organisms to stay around in that particular biofilm. At that point in time, it now appears that there is a re-regulation or an up regulation of the genes associated with the free-swimming or suspended lifestyle. And what we’ve noticed in P. aeruginosa is that it appears those organisms now start to express the flagella again and down-regulate the pilli and will actually evacuate certain portions o
