Page 112 - Proceeding The 2nd International Seminar of Science and Technology : Accelerating Sustainable Innovation Towards Society 5.0

nd
The 2 International Seminar of Science and Technology
“Accelerating Sustainable innovation towards Society 5.0”
ISST 2022 FST UT 2022
Universitas Terbuka
experience dormancy (persister) which means the bacteria reduce
their metabolic activity so that antibiotics become ineffective at killing
bacteria [16], [25], [27]. According to Stewart [28], usually antibiotics
works by killing bacteria that metabolically active. Metabolically active
bacteria have the ability to synthesize macromolecules which are the
target molecules of antibiotics in recognizing bacteria. In contrast,
inactive or dormant bacteria will not produce macromolecules.
Another factor that causes biofilm resistance to antibiotics is horizontal
gene transfer. The high population density in the biofilm allows
bacteria to carry out symbiosis. The symbiosis that occurs between
bacteria causes gene transfer. Bacteria that have plasmids with
resistance genes can transfer these genes through a horizontal gene
transfer mechanism[11], [25]. Horizontal gene transfer is more
effective in bacteria that live in biofilm compared to planktonic bacteria.
Krol et al., [29] reported, the gene transfer ability in biofilm is more
effective 7-700 times. Besides, the structure of the biofilm increases
the stability of the plasmid and the mobility of the transferred genes.
The density of bacteria population in the biofilm increases the mobile
genetic elements (MGEs). The structure of the biofilm matrix also
maintains the quality of the conjugative pili [30]. This also showed in a
study by Krol et al., [29] that said, the gene transfer mechanism
happened if bacteria close with each other which occur if the density
of the bacterial population is high. Living in biofilm causes bacteria to
be close to each other, this facilitates the transfer of plasmids [29].
Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that biofilm
resistance to antibiotics occur due to various factors such as biofilm
physical and physiological factors, and factors related to genetic
material [25]. Therefore, biological agent to treat biofilm is needed and
one that has potential is bacteriophage.

2.3 Bacteriophage
Bacteriophage or also called phage are virus that infect bacteria
(Figure. 3a). The name bacteriophage comes from the word’s
bacteria and phage in which in Greek means bacteria-eater. As a

ISST 2022 – FST Universitas Terbuka, Indonesia 91
International Seminar of Science and Technology “Accelerating Sustainable
Towards Society 5.0