Induction of resistance to Staphylococcus aureus in an environmental marine biofilm

The study of environmental biofilms is complicated by the difficulty of working with them under lab conditions. Nonetheless, knowledge of cellular activity and interactions within environmental biofilms could lead to novel biomedical applications. As a first step in this direction we propose a novel technique for inducing resistance to Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) in an intact environmental biofilm. Agar plates were prepared with or without the addition of 20% S. aureus spent culture media and immersed in coastal seawater (Boston Harbor, Massachusetts, USA) for four days to grow up an environmental biofilm. Nucleopore filters inoculated with an overnight culture of S. aureus were then applied to the surface of the agar plates with the environmental biofilms, incubated 4 h at 37 °C, removed and subsequently stained and analyzed. Marine environmental biofilms grown on agar containing S. aureus spent culture media were significantly more inhibitory of S. aureus growth than were marine environmental biofilms grown on plain agar.