(620bd) Microdroplet-Enabled Co-Cultivation and Characterization of Natural Microbial Communities

Microdroplet-enabled co-cultivation and characterization
of natural microbial communities

Sida
"Steven" Wang¹, Mark A. Burns^1,2,
Xiaoxia "Nina" Lin^1,2

¹Department of
Chemical Engineering, 3074 H.H. Dow, 2300 Hayward Street, Ann Arbor, MI
48109-2136

²Department of
Biomedical Engineering, 1107 Carl A. Gerstacker
Building, 2200 Bonisteel Blvd., Ann Arbor, MI
48109-2099

The
majority of existing microbial species, in particular bacteria living in
synergistic communities, have not been cultured and characterized in the
laboratory. One important reason behind this "unculturability"
is that conventional laboratory cultivation is aimed at pure cultures of
individual species. This eliminates any potential interactions between
different microbial species within a community necessary for growth of certain
species.  Another challenge comes
from the sheer size and complexity of many microbial communities that require
high-throughput cultivation, which conventional laboratory techniques cannot
accomplish.  We have developed a
microfluidic platform utilizing aqueous-in-oil microdroplets
for high throughput parallel co-cultivation of symbiotic microbial communities.
We previously demonstrated the effectiveness of this cultivation platform using
genetically engineered auxotrophic E.
coli strains as our model system. In
this work, we report new progresses in employing this conceptual and
technological framework to isolate previously uncultured bacteria from natural
microbial communities such as host-associated microbiomes.

Keywords: Droplet Microfluidics, Microbial Communities,
Co-Cultivation, Unculturable
Bacteria