Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland.
Department of Pharmacy, Division of Biomedicine, University of Salerno, Fisciano, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2017 Apr 5;7:45897. doi: 10.1038/srep45897.
The development of strategies to reduce the load of unwanted bacteria is a fundamental challenge in industrial processing, environmental sciences and medical applications. Here, we report a new method to sequester motile bacteria from a liquid, based on passive, deployable micro-traps that confine bacteria using micro-funnels that open into trapping chambers. Even in low concentrations, micro-traps afford a 70% reduction in the amount of bacteria in a liquid sample, with a potential to reach >90% as shown by modelling improved geometries. This work introduces a new approach to contain the growth of bacteria without chemical means, an advantage of particular importance given the alarming growth of pan-drug-resistant bacteria.
开发减少有害细菌负荷的策略是工业加工、环境科学和医疗应用中的一个基本挑战。在这里，我们报告了一种从液体中隔离运动细菌的新方法，该方法基于被动式可展开微陷阱，利用微通道将细菌限制在捕获室中。即使在低浓度下，微陷阱也能使液体样本中的细菌数量减少 70%，通过对改进的几何形状进行建模，这一比例有望达到 90%以上。这项工作引入了一种不使用化学手段来控制细菌生长的新方法，鉴于泛耐药菌的惊人增长，这一优势尤其重要。
