Microbial biofilm systems are of industrial, environmental and medical concern. The existence of a structured matrix of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) distinguishes biofilms from other bacterial communities. We contend that a lack of a cohesive framework for achieving solubilization of biofilm matrices contributes to suboptimal biofilm control strategies and a rudimentary understanding of important extracellular processes, such as cell-cell signaling and horizontal gene transfer. Here, we demonstrate that ionic liquids enable nonpolar systems for biofilm dissolution and allow the solubility parameter concept to be applied to a range of biofilms to identify optimum solvents. Solubilization was measured in terms of intrinsic solute viscosity (eta), and Hildebrand solubility parameters (delta) for Pseudomonas aeruginosa rugose small colony variant biofilms and two distinct types of activated sludge biofilms were determined to be 24.8, 26.0 and 25.8 MPa1/2 respectively. Chromatographic separation of the matrix components of each biofilm was achieved in a 40 : 60 v/v blend of 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate in N,N-dimethylacetamide, with partitioning of individual molecular weight fractions of each biofilm into the mobile phase accompanied by clear chromatographic peaks. While each biofilm may require its own specific solvent mixture, the work presented here provides a conceptual framework to enable the identification of that solvent mixture which will ultimately allow for the fractionation, isolation and characterization of hitherto intractable biofilm polymers.
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机译：微生物生物膜系统具有工业，环境和医学关注。细胞外聚合物（EPS）的结构化基质的存在将生物膜与其他细菌群落区分开来。我们认为缺乏实现生物膜基质溶解的内聚框架会导致生物膜控制策略欠佳，并且对重要的细胞外过程（如细胞信号转导和水平基因转移）缺乏基本的了解。在这里，我们证明了离子液体使非极性系统能够溶解生物膜，并允许将溶解度参数概念应用于一系列生物膜以识别最佳溶剂。用固有溶质粘度（η）测量增溶作用，铜绿假单胞菌皱纹小菌落变体生物膜和两种不同类型的活性污泥生物膜的希尔德布兰德溶解度参数（δ）分别确定为24.8、26.0和25.8 MPa1 / 2。色谱分离每个生物膜的基质成分是通过将乙酸1-乙基-3-甲基咪唑鎓盐在N，N-二甲基乙酰胺中的比例为40:60 v / v进行的，将每个生物膜的各个分子量部分分配到流动相中伴随有清晰的色谱峰。尽管每种生物膜可能需要其自己的特定溶剂混合物，但此处介绍的工作提供了一个概念框架，使该溶剂混合物得以鉴定，这最终将允许对迄今难以处理的生物膜聚合物进行分馏，分离和表征。
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