We are developing a micro-bioreactor to grow anaerobic microogranisms in pure cultures. By using microfluidics to culture such organisms, we have the ability to perform direct microscopy without sampling disturbance. In this work, we developed a micro-bioreactor with a total volume of 5 microliters to study the growth optimum of a methanogen. The micro-bioreactor is contained in an anaerobic chamber specifically designed to be placed directly onto an inverted light microscope stage, while maintaining a N2/CO2 gas mixture.

More on the micro-bioreactor for methanogen studies.

Marcelo Garcia (in collaboration with Dr. Amy Shen's Lab) is the person working on the micro-bioreactor in the Angenent Lab, and his work is funded by CREES-USDA.