title: Optical sorting and cultivation of denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation archaea.
abstract: Denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidizing (DAMO) microorganisms play an important role in the global carbon and nitrogen cycles as they are able to mediate methane oxidation using nitrite/nitrate under anoxic conditions. However, the physiological properties of DAMO microorganisms remain poorly understood, partially since the organisms are difficult to isolate or cultivate in pure culture and partially because of their long cultivation time. In this study, DAMO cell sorting has been conducted by integrating optical tweezers within enclosed microfluidic chips. This integrated cell sorting method has high purity, low infection rates, and causes no discernable harm to cell viability. The purity of the sorted cells was controlled by the microfluidic chip structure design and operation, while the cell viability was verified by imaging the cultured DAMO archaea after 420 days.
authors.affiliation: Quantum Science Laboratory, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia; State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoqiong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: Quantum Science Laboratory, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Carberry
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Center, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Center, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Shihu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Center, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Zhiguo
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Quantum Science Laboratory, School of Mathematics and Physics, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia.
authors.forename: Halin Rubinsztein
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Dunlop
authors.affiliation: Advanced Water Management Center, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia; j.guo@awmc.uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Jianhua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Guo
keywords: (020.7010) Laser trapping; (350.4855) Optical tweezers or optical manipulation