Although this traditional way of culturing
bacteria in liquid media has been instrumental in the study of microbial pathogenesis and
enlightening as to some of the amazing facets of microbial physiology, pure culture
planktonic growth is rarely how bacteria exist in nature. On the contrary, direct observation
of wide of variety of natural habitats has shown that the majority of microbes persist
attached to surfaces within a structured biofilm ecosystem and not as free-floating
organisms (Costerton et al., 1987, 1995; Kolter & Greenberg, 2006; Verstraeten et al., 2008).