Forget about the old Petri dishes and culture media! A brilliant new method for the growing of microorganisms in order to study their behavior, especially in a large community, again tracking the phenomenon of quorum sensing , has been developed and put to use.

The new invention, by Connell et al., resembles a trapping sack for microorganisms, made of bovine serum albumin covalently cross-linked by laser lithography to form a three dimensional structure. These harboring chambers are very small, with a 2 to 6 picoliter capacity, and are permeable, and thus allowing an infinite influx of nutrients and other essential small molecules for the bacteria growing inside.

Scientists have already compared the growth rates of Pseudomonas cells in “the trap sacks” to those in conventional culture media and mouse lungs and the results were promising! The new technique allows them to study patterns of antibiotic resistance, infection and biofilm formation more clearly and in earlier phases of bacterial growth…

Source: Science magazine, Vol. 330 issue 6004.

Image source: Microbiology Bytes