Some Mycobacteria produce special types of surface substance during the growth phase that causes them to stick together in a parallel fashion way. The formed ordered structure, called biofilm, increases in size and ends up in a complex extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) matrix. In pharmacology, the study of biofilm properties is important because forming a clump by bacteria results in a higher resistance to current antibiotics.
Infections of M. tuberculosis are mostly asymptomatic, chronic in a clinically symptomatic state and highly recalcitrant to antibiotics. The mechanisms underlying persistence of the pathogen against the host immune system still remain unclear, these clinical features bear similarities with the characteristics of infections associated with microbial biofilms; thereby raising the question as to whether or not M. tuberculosis forms biofilms and if biofilm formation contributes to their persistence.
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