School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Physics Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA.
Chemical and Biological Engineering Department, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 59717, USA.
Small. 2015 Aug 26;11(32):3954-61. doi: 10.1002/smll.201403125. Epub 2015 May 8.
In this work, microfluidic technology is used to rapidly create hundreds of thousands of monodisperse double and triple emulsion drops that serve as 3D microenvironments for the containment and growth of bacterial biofilms. The size of these drops, with diameters from tens to hundreds of micrometers, makes them amenable to rapid manipulation and analysis. This is demonstrated by using microscopy to visualize cellular differentiation of Bacillus subtilis biofilm communities within each drop and the bacterial biofilm microstructure. Biofilm growth is explored upon specific interfaces in double and triple emulsions and upon negative and positive radii of curvature. Biofilm attachment of matrix and flagella mutants is studied as well as biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This is the first demonstration of biofilms grown in microscale emulsion drops, which serve as both templates and containers for biofilm growth and attachment. These microenvironments have the potential to transform existing high-throughput screening methods for bacterial biofilms.
在这项工作中，微流控技术被用于快速创建数十万种单分散的双乳液和三乳液液滴，这些液滴作为容纳和生长细菌生物膜的 3D 微环境。这些液滴的直径从几十到几百微米不等，非常适合快速操作和分析。这可以通过使用显微镜观察每个液滴内枯草芽孢杆菌生物膜群落的细胞分化以及细菌生物膜的微观结构来证明。在双乳液和三乳液中以及在负曲率和正曲率半径上探索了生物膜的生长。研究了基质和鞭毛突变体的生物膜附着以及铜绿假单胞菌的生物膜。这是首次在微尺度乳液滴中生长生物膜的演示，这些乳液滴既可以作为生物膜生长和附着的模板，也可以作为容器。这些微环境有可能改变现有的细菌生物膜高通量筛选方法。
