ABSTRACT
Martinius Beijerinck, the Dutch microbiologist, was almost certainly the father of plate diffusion methods in analytical microbiology. Gel-diffusion methods have been applied to two main areas of microbiology since that time. Testing the activity of inhibitory agents has proved a speedy and efficient tool especially to medical microbiologists who need rapid, reasonably precise information to help them choose appropriate antibiotics for particular microbial infections. In applied microbiology, there are certain areas where an understanding of factors that prevent microbial growth are of paramount importance. Combinatorial methods should have a part to play in detecting synergism or antagonism in combined drug therapy or in choosing agents needed to inhibit growth in industrial systems, fuel lines, engineering lubricants, oil storage tanks, and so on. Preliminary experiments have indicated that multidimensional systems will prove a useful tool to examine competition between particular species.
