Environmental microbiology-on-a-chip and its future impacts.
Rapid advances in microfabrication, DNA and protein microarray and microfluidic technologies have enabled the development of fully-integrated, miniaturized systems. These so called 'laboratory-on-a-chip' (LOC) devices perform sample preparation (i.e. concentration, separation and purification) together with biochemical reactions and detection steps in a simple and automated manner. We believe LOC technology for environmental microbiology studies will have immediate impacts on microbial monitoring by achieving detection and identification within minutes at the single-cell level, and on microbial ecology by deepening the understanding of microbial community structure and diversity and correlating these with niche-specific functions within a micro space. In the long run, significant impacts are anticipated on environmental metagenomics and proteomics.
Liu
Wen-Tso
WT
Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117576, Singapore. cveliuwt@nus.edu.sg
Zhu
Liang
L
D004783:Environmental Microbiology; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D056656:Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; D046208:Microchip Analytical Procedures / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*