EDITORIAL
This entire issue of the Journal of Bacteriology is dedicated to the 8th ASM Conference on Biofilms, which was held from 7 to 11 October 2018 in Washington, DC. The meeting was cochaired by Karen Visick and Jean-Marc Ghigo and was attended by ∼560 scientists from academia and industry. This special issue dedicated to the meeting includes 18 research articles, a commentary associated with one of the articles, two minireviews, a meeting overview, and a wonderful cover image. This is one of the largest meeting issues we have had in my memory and reflects the enthusiasm for the field and quality of science at the meeting. The topics covered by the meeting, as reflected in the articles in this issue, span diverse topics, organisms, and approaches. These articles also reflect where the field has come from since the first ASM meeting on biofilms. I was especially excited about the breadth of fields from which the researchers approached their studies, including physics, ecology, and modeling. And the increased emphasis on polymicrobial biofilms in many ways brings the field back to its roots, but these studies now have a strong dose of molecular mechanism and are supported by a growing knowledge base of such communities using culture-independent studies. It will be exciting to see where the field is 3 years from now at the 9th ASM Conference on Biofilms.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the journal or of ASM.