dMSCC: A microfluidic platform for microbial single-cell cultivation under dynamic environmental medium conditions

In nature and in technical systems, microbial cells are often exposed to rapidly fluctuating environmental conditions. These conditions can vary in quality, e.g., existence of a starvation zone, and quantity, e.g., average residence time in this zone. For strain development and process design, cellular response to such fluctuations needs to be systematically analysed. However, the existing methods for physically emulating rapidly changing environmental conditions are limited in spatio-temporal resolution. Hence, we present a novel microfluidic system for cultivation of single cells and small cell clusters under dynamic environmental conditions (dynamic microfluidic single-cell cultivation (dMSCC)). This system enables to control nutrient availability and composition between two media with second to minute resolution. We validate our technology using the industrially relevant model organism Corynebacterium glutamicum. The organism was exposed to different oscillation frequencies between nutrient excess (feasts) and scarcity (famine). Resulting changes in cellular physiology, such as the colony growth rate and cell morphology were analysed and revealed significant differences with growth rate and cell length between the different conditions. dMSCC also allows to apply defined but randomly changing nutrient conditions, which is important for reproducing more complex conditions from natural habitats and large-scale bioreactors. The presented system lays the foundation for the cultivation of cells under complex changing environmental conditions.