FIG. 3.

Effective adhesion rates of biofilm-shed and suspension culture S. aureus Phillips cells to a collagen substrate at a rate of 300 s⁻¹. Shown is adhesion of bacterial cells from a primary suspension culture (checkered bars), a secondary suspension culture (horizontally striped bars) and planktonic cells shed from S. aureus Phillips biofilms grown on collagen at a wall shear rate of 40 s⁻¹ (black bars) or 100 s⁻¹ (gray bars) and grown on fibrinogen at 100 s⁻¹ (stippled bars). Cells were collected from the effluent over successive 4-h intervals of biofilm culture as indicated. Asterisks represent statistical significance with respect to secondary suspension culture cells harvested at concurrent time intervals (P < 0.05). All values represent means ± standard deviations of three or more experiments. No binding events were observed with PH100 cells from suspension or biofilm cultures (data not shown).