Open AccessCultivation of Chlorella vulgaris in microfluid segments and microtoxicological determination of their sensitivity against CuCl 2 in the nanoliter range
Author(s) -
Kürsten Dana,
Cao Jialan,
Funfak Anette,
Müller Philipp,
Köhler J. Michael
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
engineering in life sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.547
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1618-2863
pISSN - 1618-0240
DOI - 10.1002/elsc.201100023
Subject(s) - chlorella vulgaris , algae , chlorella , photobioreactor , microfluidics , alkalinity , chromatography , biology , chemistry , botany , materials science , nanotechnology , biomass (ecology) , ecology , organic chemistry
The cultivation of the monocellular green alga Chlorella vulgaris was implemented into microfluid segments to demonstrate the possibility of an automated screening of toxic effects of the common algaecide CuCl 2 . Therefore, the nutritional as well as light and carbon dioxide requirements of the algae had to be adapted to the microfluidic device. Generally, sequences of about 350 fluid segments with single volumes of about 500 nL were applied for the dose–response experiments. The growth of algae cultures inside microfluidic segments was non‐invasively measured by microflow through techniques using two different optical channels. A multi‐endpoint detection was realized by the photometric characterization of cell density by transmission measurements and the measurement of density of autofluorescent cells. The different methods revealed comparable half maximal effective concentrations (EC 50 ) in the range between 34.6 and 39.9 μg/mL for the toxicity of CuCl 2 to the green algae C. vulgaris . By reference experiments in microtiter plates lower EC 50 were achieved presumably caused by increased alkalinity of the growth medium due to higher photosynthesis. The results show that the microsegmented flow technique is well suited for the automated determination of dose/response functions for microorganisms like C. vulgaris and for the application of multi‐endpoint procedures at the nanoliter scale.