Bio Pilot Plant, Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology - Hans-Knöll-Institute (HKI), Jena, Germany.
Faculty of Biological Sciences, Friedrich Schiller University (FSU), Jena, Germany.
Adv Biochem Eng Biotechnol. 2022;179:129-157. doi: 10.1007/10_2020_140.
Droplet microfluidics has recently evolved as a prominent platform for high-throughput experimentation for various research fields including microbiology. Key features of droplet microfluidics, like compartmentalization, miniaturization, and parallelization, have enabled many possibilities for microbiology including cultivation of microorganisms at a single-cell level, study of microbial interactions in a community, detection and analysis of microbial products, and screening of extensive microbial libraries with ultrahigh-throughput and minimal reagent consumptions. In this book chapter, we present several aspects and applications of droplet microfluidics for its implementation in various fields of microbial biotechnology. Recent advances in the cultivation of microorganisms in droplets including methods for isolation and domestication of rare microbes are reviewed. Similarly, a comparison of different detection and analysis techniques for microbial activities is summarized. Finally, several microbial applications are discussed with a focus on exploring new antimicrobials and high-throughput enzyme activity screening. We aim to highlight the advantages, limitations, and current developments in droplet microfluidics for microbial biotechnology while envisioning its enormous potential applications in the future.
液滴微流控技术最近已成为一个重要的高通量实验平台，适用于包括微生物学在内的多个研究领域。液滴微流控技术的关键特点，如分隔、微型化和并行化，为微生物学带来了许多可能性，包括单细胞水平培养微生物、研究群落中的微生物相互作用、检测和分析微生物产物，以及使用超高通量和最小试剂消耗筛选广泛的微生物文库。在本章中，我们将介绍液滴微流控技术的几个方面和应用，以实现其在微生物生物技术的各个领域中的应用。我们回顾了液滴中微生物培养的最新进展，包括稀有微生物的分离和驯化方法。同样，我们还总结了不同微生物活性检测和分析技术的比较。最后，我们讨论了几个微生物应用，重点是探索新的抗菌药物和高通量酶活性筛选。我们旨在强调液滴微流控技术在微生物生物技术中的优势、局限性和当前发展，同时展望其在未来的巨大应用潜力。
