We discovered that the new lipid/PDA assemblies can be applied for bacterial and bacterial biofilm detection. In particular, we have discovered that PDA can be embedded within different transparent host matrixes, such as agar-gels and silica sol-gel. Importantly, the PDA domains in such assemblies can be utilized for color and fluorescence sensing of bacterialpresence and biofilm formation. The new sensing techniques could become a versatile and useful tool for detecting bacterial contaminations in varied environments, biofilm formation, and applied for high throughput screening of bacterial resistance to antibiotic compounds and biofilm inhibitors.