Micro Segmented Flow in Selection and Characterization of New Heavy Metal-Tolerant Bacterial Strains
J Michael Koehler,
Head of Department,
Technische Universitat Ilmenau
Metagenome analyses are showing that only a small part of bacteria species which exist on earth have been cultivated and characterized up to now. A special task is the search of heavy metal tolerant bacteria strains because they let expect special metabolic activities which could be of interest for future biotechnical syntheses, in particular in the development of new drugs.
A microfluidic three-volume level concept was developed in order to use the advantages of microfluidic devices and procedures in an efficient way. Beside tube screenings in the sub-microliter level, this concept includes chip devices for highly parallelized long-term cultivation of different organisms from unknown soil communities under stochastic confinement conditions in the lower nanoliter level as well as a compact disc with complex fluidic functions for highly resolved and two-dimensional dose/response characterization of single strains and microbial communities. Bacterial growth and the induction of dyed or fluorescing metabolites by heavy metal ions and nanoparticles were investigated by miniaturized sensors for fluorescence, optical absorption and Raman resonances. In result, selection strategies combining microfluidic and conventional cultivation methods have been developed and applied in the characterization of soil samples and in isolation of highly heavy metal-tolerant bacterial strains from ancient mining areas.
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