Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA.
Department of Microbiology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA.
Biotechniques. 2019 May;66(5):218-224. doi: 10.2144/btn-2018-0124.
Microbiomes exert significant influence on our planet's ecology. Elucidating the identities of individual microbes within these communities and how they interact is a vital research imperative. Using traditional plating and culturing methods, it is impractical to assess even a small fraction of the interactions that exist within microbial communities. To address this technology gap, we integrated gel microdroplet technology with microfluidics to generate millions of microdroplet cultures (MDs) that sequester individual cells for phenotyping MDs, facilitating rapid analysis and viable recovery using flow cytometry. Herein, we describe a validated high-throughput phenotyping pipeline that elucidates cell-to-cell interactions for millions of combinations of microorganisms. Through iterative co-culturing of an algae and a pool of environmentally sourced microbes, we successfully isolated bacteria that improved algal growth.
微生物组对我们星球的生态产生了重大影响。阐明这些群落中单个微生物的身份以及它们如何相互作用是一项至关重要的研究任务。使用传统的平板和培养方法，即使评估微生物群落中存在的一小部分相互作用也是不切实际的。为了解决这一技术差距，我们将凝胶微滴技术与微流控技术相结合，生成了数百万个微滴培养物 (MDs)，这些微滴培养物将单个细胞隔离用于表型分析 MDs，从而使用流式细胞术实现快速分析和可行的回收。在这里，我们描述了一个经过验证的高通量表型分析管道，该管道阐明了数百万种微生物组合的细胞间相互作用。通过藻类和环境来源微生物池的反复共培养，我们成功分离出了能够促进藻类生长的细菌。
