Microfluidic techniques for separation of bacterial cells via taxis
Authors:Jyoti P. Gurung1, Murat Gel2,3 and Matthew A. B. Baker1,3
doi: 10.15698/mic2020.03.710
Volume 7, pp. 66 to 79, published 15/01/2020.
1 School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Science, UNSW Sydney.
2 CSIRO Manufacturing, Clayton.
3 CSIRO Future Science Platform for Synthetic Biology.
Keywords:
flagellar motor, chemotaxis, microfluidics, motility, thermotaxis
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflicts of interest with this work.
Please cite this article as:
Jyoti P. Gurung, Murat Gel and Matthew A. B. Baker (2020). Microfluidic techniques for separation of bacte-rial cells via taxis. Microbial Cell 7(3): 66-79. doi: 10.15698/mic2020.03.710
© 2020 Gurung et al. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
The microbial environment is typically within a fluid and the key processes happen at the microscopic scale where viscosity dominates over inertial forces. Microfluidic tools are thus well suited to study microbial motility because they offer precise control of spatial structures and are ideal for the generation of laminar fluid flows with low Reynolds numbers at microbial lengthscales. These tools have been used in combination with microscopy platforms to visualise and study various microbial taxes. These include establishing concentration and temperature gradients to influence motility via chemotaxis and thermotaxis, or controlling the surrounding microenvironment to influence rheotaxis, magnetotaxis, and phototaxis. Improvements in microfluidic technology have allowed fine separation of cells based on subtle differences in motility traits and have applications in synthetic biology, directed evolution, and applied medical microbiology.