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Updated: Jul 8, 2026

Concurrent Quantification of Cellular and Extracellular Components of Biofilms
Published on: December 10, 2013
Comparison of multiple methods for quantification of microbial biofilms grown in microtiter plates
Elke Peeters1, Hans J Nelis, Tom Coenye
1Laboratory for Pharmaceutical Microbiology, Ghent University, Harelbekestraat 72, Ghent, Belgium.
Abstract:
In the present study six assays for the quantification of biofilms formed in 96-well microtiter plates were optimised and evaluated: the crystal violet (CV) assay, the Syto9 assay, the fluorescein diacetate (FDA) assay, the resazurin assay, the XTT assay and the dimethyl methylene blue (DMMB) assay. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Burkholderia cenocepacia, Staphylococcus aureus, Propionibacterium acnes and Candida albicans were used as test organisms. In general, these assays showed a broad applicability and a high repeatability for most isolates. In addition, the estimated numbers of CFUs present in the biofilms show limited variations between the different assays. Nevertheless, our data show that some assays are less suitable for the quantification of biofilms of particular isolates (e.g. the CV assay for P. aeruginosa).
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