We are honored to present an insightful interview with Dr. Bianca Sclavi, Director of Research at CNRS, conducted during our visit to her laboratory at the Institut Pasteur!
Dr. Sclavi shared her pioneering research on bacterial adaptation to antibiotics, a field critical to the advancement of novel therapeutic strategies.
Check the Full Video Here!
Her group employs a holistic approach to understand how bacterial populations adapt to environmental changes, particularly focusing on their responses to sublethal antibiotic doses. By observing bacterial behavior under these conditions, they aim to uncover mechanisms that enable survival at higher, lethal antibiotic concentrations. This research moves beyond traditional studies of genetic remodeling and intracellular reactions, offering a comprehensive view of bacterial adaptation.
A key component of their methodology is the use of sophisticated microfluidic devices, composed of a controlled flow system from Elveflow and a “mother machine” chip. These devices provide controlled environments that facilitate rapid changes in conditions, allowing for precise observation of individual bacterial cells over time. This setup overcomes limitations of traditional agar plate cultures, where the experiment ends once the colony has filled the field of view, and where it is difficult to change the growth medium of the cells. The mother machine is a simple yet powerful continuous culture microfluidic setup. It features dead-ended growth channels approximately one micron in diameter, specifically designed to match the size of individual rod-shaped bacteria. These growth channels branch out from a central feeding channel.
The mother cell is trapped at the closed end of a growth channel, and as it divides, the daughter cells are pushed toward the feeding channel, where they are flushed away by the flow. This ingenious design delivers new growth medium to the cells and washes away the waste produced by their metabolism, allowing for precise, continuous observation of individual bacterial cells over time. The chip is placed in a thermoregulated chamber for the long term testing of bacterial behavior and we can observe the bacterial expansion under fluorescent microscopy.
In the interview, Dr. Sclavi detailed the experimental setup, which includes:
This integrated system enables the team to maintain stable conditions, prevent bubble formation, and switch specific media over extended periods. The MUX valve allows for the delivery of up to eight different antibiotic concentrations, facilitating the study of bacterial adaptation from sublethal to lethal doses.
Dr. Sclavi also highlighted a significant project led by her former PhD student, Ilaria Iuliani, which investigated the bacterial cell cycle. Given the challenges of synchronizing bacterial cells, the team utilized microfluidic devices to study single cells, enabling accurate study of gene expression in relation to DNA replication in Escherichia coli. Learn more about it in her recent publication in Science Advances here!
This interview underscores the transformative impact of microfluidic technology in microbiological research and its potential to drive the development of more effective antibiotics.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to Dr. Sclavi for her warm welcome and for sharing her invaluable expertise with us. (Read more about her work in this previous Application Note)
Iuliani et al., “Direct single-cell observation of a key Escherichia coli cell-cycle oscillator,” Sciences Advances, 2024 Available: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado5398
Michal Wlodarski et al., “Cytosolic Crowding Drives the Dynamics of Both Genome and Cytosol in Escherichia coli Challenged with Sub-lethal Antibiotic Treatments”, iScience, 2020. Available: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101560
Elveflow, “How to study bacteria by microfluidics,” Available: https://www.elveflow.com/microfluidic-applications/microfluidic-cell-culture/how-to-study-bacteria-by-microfluidics/.
For any help to determine what microfluidic instruments you need, you can contact us! Our experts will help you build the best microfluidic setup for your application, with our state-of-the-art microfluidic line.
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