Who put the film in biofilm? The migration of a term from wastewater engineering to medicine and beyond

• Main Authors: Flemming, Hans-Curt, Baveye, Philippe, Neu, Thomas R., Stoodley, Paul, Szewzyk, Ulrich, Wingender, Jost, Wuertz, Stefan
• Other Authors: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Science::Biological sciences; Applied Microbiology; Biofilms
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/151966
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Sessile microorganisms were described as early as the seventeenth century. However, the term biofilm arose only in the 1960s in wastewater treatment research and was adopted later in marine fouling and in medical and dental microbiology. The sessile mode of microbial life was gradually recognized to...