School of Mechanical and Advanced Materials Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Banyeon-ri 100, Ulsan, 689-798, Republic of Korea.
Lab Chip. 2011 Sep 7;11(17):2916-23. doi: 10.1039/c1lc20230h. Epub 2011 Jul 14.
We present a microfabricated concentrator array device that makes it possible to quantify the predation rate of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, a predatory microbe, toward its prey, Escherichia coli str. MG1655. The device can accumulate both prey and predator microbes sequentially within a series of concentrator arrays using the motility of the microbes and microfabricated arrowhead-shaped ratchet structures. Since the device can constrain both prey and predator cells within 200 pL chambers at a desired range of cell densities, it was demonstrated that the device cannot only enhance the possibility of studying predation processes/cycles directly at a single cell level but can also quantify the predation rates indirectly by measuring the time-dependent fluorescent intensity signals from the prey. Furthermore, the device can produce a wide range of initial prey to predator density ratios within various concentrator arrays through the use of microfluidic mixer structures on a single array chip, which allows us to study many different conditions with a single set of cultures, and quantitatively characterize the predation behaviour/rate. Lastly, we note that this novel concentrator array device can be a very powerful tool facilitating studies of microbial predations and microbe-microbe interaction and may be broadly used in other microbial biotechnological applications.
我们提出了一种微制造的浓缩器阵列装置，使得定量研究捕食性微生物蛭弧菌（Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus）对其猎物大肠杆菌 MG1655 的捕食率成为可能。该装置可以利用微生物的运动和微制造的箭头形棘轮结构，在一系列浓缩器阵列中顺序积累猎物和捕食者微生物。由于该装置可以将猎物和捕食者细胞限制在 200 pL 腔室内的期望细胞密度范围内，因此该装置不仅可以增强在单细胞水平上直接研究捕食过程/周期的可能性，还可以通过测量来自猎物的随时间变化的荧光强度信号来间接定量捕食率。此外，该装置可以通过在单个阵列芯片上使用微流体混合结构，在各种浓缩器阵列中产生广泛的初始猎物到捕食者密度比，从而允许我们用一组培养物研究许多不同的条件，并定量表征捕食行为/率。最后，我们注意到，这种新型浓缩器阵列装置可以成为促进微生物捕食和微生物相互作用研究的非常强大的工具，并且可能广泛用于其他微生物生物技术应用。
