Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge , Lensfield Road, Cambridge, CB2 1EW, U.K.
Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge , Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EA, U.K.
Anal Chem. 2016 Nov 1;88(21):10445-10451. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.6b02364. Epub 2016 Oct 21.
Microalgae and cyanobacteria are promising organisms for sustainable biofuel production, but several challenges remain to make this economically viable, including identification of optimized strains with high biomass productivity. Here we report on a novel methodology for the label-free screening and sorting of cyanobacteria and microalgae in a microdroplet platform. We show for the first time that chlorophyll fluorescence can be used to measure differences in biomass between populations of picoliter microdroplets containing different species of cyanobacteria, Synechocystis PCC 6803 and Synechococcus PCC 7002, which exhibit different growth dynamics in bulk culture. The potential and robustness of this label-free screening approach is further demonstrated by the screening and sorting of cells of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii encapsulated in droplets.
微藻和蓝藻是很有前途的可持续生物燃料生产生物，但要使其在经济上可行，仍有一些挑战需要克服，包括鉴定具有高生物量生产力的优化菌株。在这里，我们报告了一种在微滴平台上对蓝藻和微藻进行无标记筛选和分类的新方法。我们首次表明，叶绿素荧光可以用来测量含有不同蓝藻物种（聚球藻 PCC 6803 和聚球藻 PCC 7002）的皮升级微滴群体之间的生物量差异，这些蓝藻在批量培养中表现出不同的生长动态。通过对微滴中包封的绿藻莱茵衣藻细胞的筛选和分类，进一步证明了这种无标记筛选方法的潜力和稳健性。
