A pico-liter semi-automated screening method for morphological identification of microorganisms from environmental samples

Researchers have been developing numerous advance microfabrication technologies for studying eukaryotic cells on chip. Developing similar protocol for prokaryotic organisms is difficult due to various reasons like small feature size, similar physical and chemical properties, high environmental diversity, etc. By using classical microbiology experiment it is difficult to analyze organism at single cell level. There is a need to develop a prototype for analyzing environmental samples like soil, marine water which contains diverse group of microorganisms. Here we present a picoliter volume semi automated screening method by using lab on chip (LOC) platform. Microchannels were fabricated by locally developed economical photolithography method. The morphological identification of microorganisms was done by open source software. The current chip can be adapted for various microbiological screening experiments like biochemical based microbial identification, studying uncultivable microorganisms at single cell /community level.