2). Both techniques are compatible with CLSM (Haagensen et al., 2011; Weiss Nielsen et al., 2011). Static growth conditions Selleck Natural Product Library are obtained by culturing cells in a growth chamber that is attached to a microscope slide (Fig. 2a). The static growth system has the advantage that it is easy to set up and the disadvantage that growth conditions

are not easily controlled. Flow cells are composed of a chamber through which medium flows and a cover slip on which biofilm forms (Fig. 2b). The flow-cell system has a continuous supply of nutrients that is easily changed, for example, for administration of antifungals with minimal biofilm disturbance (Weiss Nielsen et al., 2011). CLSM of biofilm formed in flow cells is a powerful tool to study gene regulation upon changing environmental conditions and can be used to study regulation of, for example, FLO genes by the use of FLO promoter-GFP fusions in the biofilm-forming cells. The CLSM flow-cell method can also be used to visualize phenotypic variabilities and bistabilities in the biofilm such as variation in repression of FLO5, 9, 10 and bistabilities in FLO11 expression generated by Hda1. While many bacterial biofilms are formed on glass surfaces, S. cerevisiae biofilms are observed on polystyrene surfaces (Reynolds & Fink, 2001). However, some polystyrenes are autofluorescent and interfere with CLSM recording. Polyvinyl coverslips are an optimal choice as a surface

for yeast biofilm development and CLSM imaging, as this plastic supports biofilms and is not autofluorescent in the range of the common fluorophores (430–610 nm) (Haagensen et al., 2011; Weiss Nielsen et al., 2011). Three-dimensional biofilm structures Protein Tyrosine Kinase inhibitor can be quantified using comstat software, based on the stack of images acquired by CLSM (http://www.comstat.dk). Features calculated by COMSTAT include biovolume, selleck products area occupied by cells in each layer, thickness, substratum coverage, fractal dimension, roughness, surface-to-volume ratio, number of microcolonies and microcolony size (Heydorn et al., 2000a, b). Although this software is mainly used for quantification of bacterial biofilms, it will be a valuable tool for objective quantitative

analysis of yeast biofilms (Seneviratne et al., 2009). Fluorescent markers for CLSM are relatively easily integrated in the S. cerevisiae genome. The high frequency of homologous recombination allows for one-step gene replacement between a DNA cassette and a corresponding genomic sequence with as little as 35 bp of genomic homology (Rothstein, 1983; Wach et al., 1994). This unique feature and others have led to the synthesis of two complete deletion strain collections of S. cerevisiae (Giaever et al., 2002; Dowell et al., 2010), and GFP fusions to most S. cerevisiae gene products (Huh et al., 2003). A powerful resource for identification of genes involved in biofilm development is an almost complete collection of deletion mutants in the biofilm-forming S.