A three-dimensional (3D) printing approach to fabricate an isolation chip for high throughput cultivation of environmental microbes.

The full plethora of environmental bacteria is often poorly represented as the majority remain difficult, if not impossible, to culture under standard laboratory settings. These bacteria often require native conditions for the formation of cell masses that collectively have higher chances of survival. With that, a 3D-printed version of the isolation chip (iChip) was used to cultivate bacteria from a tropical peat swamp prior to growth and maintenance .