FIG 2.

Microbial populations in the cospecies biofilm. Shown are the total viable counts (CFU) of S. mutans in single-species and cospecies biofilms (A) and of C. albicans in cospecies biofilms (B), grown for 42 h. C. albicans alone lacked the capacity to form biofilms under our experimental conditions. The data are mean values ± standard deviations (n = 16). (A) The asterisk indicates that the values for single-species and cospecies biofilms are significantly different from each other (P, <0.05). There is a dramatic increase in the number of S. mutans CFU in cospecies biofilms (∼6-fold increase). (B) There is a large number of viable C. albicans cells in cospecies biofilms (∼10⁷ CFU/biofilm).