Abstract
Biofilms are the natural form of life of the majority of microorganisms. These multispecies consortia are intensively studied not only for their effects on health and environment but also because they have an enormous potential as tools for biotechnological processes. Further exploration and exploitation of these complex systems will benefit from technical solutions that enable integrated, machine-assisted cultivation and analysis. We here introduce a microfluidic platform, where readily available microfluidic chips are connected by automated liquid handling with analysis instrumentation, such as fluorescence detection, microscopy, chromatography and optical coherence tomography. The system is operable under oxic and anoxic conditions, allowing for different gases and nutrients as feeding sources and it offers high spatiotemporal resolution in the analysis of metabolites and biofilm composition. We demonstrate the platform’s performance by monitoring the productivity of biofilms as well as the spatial organization of two bacterial species in a co-culture, which is driven by chemical gradients along the microfluidic channel.
Highlights
Biofilms are the natural form of life of the majority of microorganisms
While few studies already illustrate the advantage of automated methodologies for biofilm research[15,16,17], several studies have applied microfluidic techniques to the field of biofilm analysis, primarily to investigate biofilm formation of model organisms that are often genetically modified in order to be traceable[17,18,19,20,21,22]
The system is based on microfluidic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chips mounted on tailored interfaces to connect with hardware for automated liquid handling and instrumental analysis, such as fluorescence reading, epifluorescence microscopy, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and liquid chromatography (Fig. 1)
Summary
Biofilms are the natural form of life of the majority of microorganisms. These multispecies consortia are intensively studied for their effects on health and environment and because they have an enormous potential as tools for biotechnological processes. The implementation of machine-assisted programs that build on solid-phase syntheses aided by fluid handling has already led to impressive advances in synthetic organic chemistry[4,5,6,7] and the manufacturing of pharmaceutical compounds[8,9] These developments are complemented by current advances in the design of microfluidic lab-on-a-chip systems for applications in the life sciences, which include fundamental studies of cellular processes, biomedical diagnostics and drug discovery as well as biocatalysis[10,11,12,13,14]. We believe that the here presented implementation of machine-assisted microfluidics, robotic handling, and in-depth instrumental analysis is an important advance for the exploration and exploitation of biofilm development and community dynamics
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