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Microdroplet enabled cultivation of single yeast cells correlates with bulk growth and reveals subpopulation phenomena
Author(s) -
Liu Hangrui,
Xu Xin,
Peng Kai,
Zhang Yuxin,
Jiang Lianmei,
Williams Thomas C.,
Paulsen Ian T.,
Piper James A.,
Li Ming
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
biotechnology and bioengineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 189
eISSN - 1097-0290
pISSN - 0006-3592
DOI - 10.1002/bit.27591
Subject(s) - yeast , biology , cell , cell growth , bioreactor , saccharomyces cerevisiae , population , metabolic engineering , dispersity , biochemistry , microbiology and biotechnology , chemistry , botany , enzyme , demography , organic chemistry , sociology
Yeast has been engineered for cost‐effective organic acid production through metabolic engineering and synthetic biology techniques. However, cell growth assays in these processes were performed in bulk at the population level, thus obscuring the dynamics of rare single cells exhibiting beneficial traits. Here, we introduce the use of monodisperse picolitre droplets as bioreactors to cultivate yeast at the single‐cell level. We investigated the effect of acid stress on growth and the effect of potassium ions on propionic acid tolerance for single yeast cells of different species, genotypes, and phenotypes. The results showed that the average growth of single yeast cells in microdroplets experiences the same trend to those of yeast populations grown in bulk, and microdroplet compartments do not significantly affect cell viability. This approach offers the prospect of detecting cell‐to‐cell variations in growth and physiology and is expected to be applied for the engineering of yeast to produce value‐added bioproducts.