1. What is biofilm

Cultivation in liquid media (known as "planktonic") has been the foundation of microbiology for over a century, ever since the work of German physician Robert Koch, who can be considered the true founder of microbiology via the development of the main methods still used in microbiology today.

The birth of microbiology

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), a Dutch trader and microscopy enthusiast, meticulously described the "animalcules" he observed using microscopes he built himself. It was with one of these microscopes that, in 1863, he described the different bacterial morphologies known to this day. It was also he who first observed what we call "biofilms" on dental surfaces.

For a long time, it was assumed that these microscopic beings were born from...