A Microfluidic Device for Imaging Samples from Microbial Suspension Cultures.

Traditional methods to assess microbial cells during suspension culture require laborious and frequent manual sampling. Approaches to automate sampling and assessment utilize dedicated, sophisticated equipment and suffer from a lack of temporal resolution and sampling efficiency. In this study we describe a simple microfluidic device that allows microbial cells to be sampled from suspension culture and rapidly slowed and concentrated for single-cell imaging on a standard laboratory microscope.