Cannabigerol Effect on Streptococcus mutans Biofilms—A Computational Approach to Confocal Image Analysis
Aqawi, The Biofilm Research Laboratory, The Faculty Of Dental Medicine, Institute Of Biomedical, Oral Research, The Hebrew University Of Jerusalem, The Institute Of Drug Research, School Of Pharmacy, Steinberg, Feuerstein
In order to better characterize the effect of cannabigerol on biofilms of S. mutans , this paper provides a series of computational assays for biofilm analysis, applied on confocal images of S. mutans biofilms treated with cannabigerol. Figure 4 illustrates differences in the characteristics of the central layer of biofilms—CBG-treated biofilms are characterized by a significant reduction in the intensity of the central layer, in addition to reduced normalized standard deviation. In terms of intensity, the amount of SYTO 9 signal, representative of live bacterial cells, in the central layer of CBG-treated biofilms is significantly reduced when compared to EtOH/untreated biofilms: when compared to control samples, EtOH, CBG 2.5 and 5 μg/mL samples exhibited reductions of 91.2, 28.9, and 32.5%, respectively. When assessing the live (SYTO 9) signal variation at the central layer, CBG-treated biofilms exhibited significantly lower normalized standard deviation values compared to EtOH-treated/control biofilms: when compared to control samples, EtOH, CBG 2.5, and 5 μg/mL samples exhibit values that are 102.5, 58.6, and 80.8%, respectively. The process of biofilm formation can be numerically quantified from confocal laser microscopy images using objective parameters for biofilm image analysis, used to compare and monitor variations in biofilm structure.