During the past two decades, direct observations of bacteria in a large number of natural and pathogenic ecosystems have shown that the majority of these organisms actually grow in matrix-enclosed biofilms adherent to surfaces. While this preponderance of biofilms is widely accepted by Microbial Ecologists, and while the predominance of biofilm infections is widely accepted in the health professions such as Dentistry and Medicine, we have only recently realized that traditional microbiological methods are unsuitable for the study of biofilms. Excellent molecular-based direct methods are available for the study of biofilms but, while these techniques are extensively used in studies of natural and engineered systems, they are just beginning to make inroads in the study of dental and medical biofilm diseases. The central theme of this conference will be to present modern biofilm concepts and methods to the dental and medical communities, in both theoretical (symposium) and practical (workshops) formats, so that they may select new and effective methods to study the etiology and pathogenesis of biofilm diseases.

In the two full years that will have passed between the ASM-sponsored Biofilms 2003 meeting in Victoria B.C. and this meeting in Los Angeles, many new concepts and methods have added to our armamentarium. New methods have allowed us to study biofilm structure and “behavior”, we are now able to speciate and enumerate bacterial cells in situ in mixed-species communities, and new molecular-based methods facilitate the analysis of natural and pathogenic biofilm communities. These concepts and methods arise in one of more of the anthrocentric divisions (e.g. Soil, or Dental Microbiology) into which Microbiology has fragmented, and a conference that ties all of these advances together and makes them available to the whole biofilm community is urgently needed. The next ASM-sponsored general biofilm meeting will be in Copenhagen in March of 2007.

J. William Costerton, PhD Chair