Monodisperse Emulsion Drop Microenvironments for Bacterial Biofilm Growth |
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| Authors: | Connie B. Chang James N. Wilking Shin‐Hyun Kim Ho Cheung Shum David A. Weitz |
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| Affiliation: | 1. School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Physics Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA;2. Chemical and Biological Engineering Department, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, USA;3. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Korea;4. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, China |
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| Abstract: | In this work, microfluidic technology is used to rapidly create hundreds of thousands of monodisperse double and triple emulsion drops that serve as 3D microenvironments for the containment and growth of bacterial biofilms. The size of these drops, with diameters from tens to hundreds of micrometers, makes them amenable to rapid manipulation and analysis. This is demonstrated by using microscopy to visualize cellular differentiation of Bacillus subtilis biofilm communities within each drop and the bacterial biofilm microstructure. Biofilm growth is explored upon specific interfaces in double and triple emulsions and upon negative and positive radii of curvature. Biofilm attachment of matrix and flagella mutants is studied as well as biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This is the first demonstration of biofilms grown in microscale emulsion drops, which serve as both templates and containers for biofilm growth and attachment. These microenvironments have the potential to transform existing high‐throughput screening methods for bacterial biofilms. |
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| Keywords: | biofilms emulsions high‐throughput microenvironments microfluidics |
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