The formation and developmental regulation of biofilm is one of the core research areas in microorganism in the last two decades. The appearance of this field thoroughly changed the understanding on the survival mode of microorganism by human. The scientists find that the microorganism is a kind of social creature.

Under the natural conditions, the microorganism can be attached to the object surface, therefore forming the highly structured and community biofilm. Compared with the planktonic living manner in the traditional cognition, the microorganisms in the biofilm live in groups, and they have unique features in the aspect of gene expression, cell behavior and adaptability on the environment.

Proposed by young scholar of domestic biofilm fields, State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University hosted the first national biofilm symposium on November 26 to 27. Young scientists from Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS) including the QIAN Wei, JIA Yantao, XIE Zhoujie and WEI Qing participated in this academic conference.

In the academic report, scientists focused on the key scientific problems and research development in signal path, cell behavior, protein structure and modern innovation experimental techniques. In the workshop, the academic round-table conference were held, and the experts reached an agreement on strengthening academic exchange, science popularization, organization of academic journals, preparation of professional periodicals and the promotion of establishing important academic community.

Not only the biofilm is important in the environment adaptive process of microorganism, but also plays a crucial role in the infectious disease of many animals and plants. Some research work has shown that the biofilm is the main manner of causing the infection of pathogenic microorganism, about 65% human bacterial infection is caused by the biofilm bacteria. In addition to, the biofilm has important actions in the environmental pollution, water treatment, crop production and other application fields.

Therefore, scientists in microbial area at home and abroad pay much attention on the research of biofilm. In recent years, along with the increase of microbiome research, the biofilm formed by several microorganisms also becomes hot research topic. At present, many kinds of academic journals (mainly the biofilm) have been published in the word. The international academic conference and special conferences with the biofilm, quorum-sensing and cell-cell communication as the main contents become the basic themes of all the international microorganism-related academic organizations.