Suzhou Institute of Nano Tech and Nano Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, P R China.
Lab Chip. 2011 Dec 7;11(23):4087-92. doi: 10.1039/c1lc20670b. Epub 2011 Oct 27.
Microfluidic systems could, in principle, enable high-throughput breeding and screening of microbial strains for industrial applications, but parallel and scalable culture and detection chips are needed before complete microbial selection systems can be integrated and tested. Here we demonstrate a scalable multi-channel chip that is capable of bacterial suspension culture. The key invention is a multi-layered chip design, which enables a single set of control channels to function as serial peristaltic pumps to drive parallel culture chamber loops. Such design leads to scalability of the culture chip. We demonstrate that E. coli growth in the chip is equivalent or superior to conventional suspension culture on shaking beds. The chip could also be used for suspension culture of other microbes such as Bacillus subtilis, Pseudomonas stutzeri, and Zymomonas mobilis, indicating its general applicability for bacterial suspension culture.
微流控系统原则上可以实现高通量的微生物菌株的选育和筛选，适用于工业应用，但在完整的微生物选择系统能够集成和测试之前，还需要能够平行扩展的培养和检测芯片。在这里，我们展示了一种可扩展的多通道芯片，该芯片能够进行细菌悬浮培养。关键的发明是一种多层芯片设计，它使一组控制通道能够作为串联蠕动泵来驱动并行培养腔回路。这种设计使培养芯片具有可扩展性。我们证明，与在摇床上进行的传统悬浮培养相比，大肠杆菌在芯片中的生长是等效的或更好的。该芯片还可用于其他微生物（如枯草芽孢杆菌、施氏假单胞菌和运动发酵单胞菌）的悬浮培养，表明其在细菌悬浮培养方面具有通用性。
