Abstract
Cyanobacteria are phylum of bacteria that obtain their energy through photosynthesis. They are also known as Cyanophyta. It is known as the most famous transformation model in microorganisms. BG-11 medium which is composed of nine ingredients and carbon sources with specifically combinatorial ratio is used to cultivate cyanobacteria. One approach to improve the growth speed of cyanobacteria in a laboratory setting is to optimize the cultivation medium and tailor the supplements according to the microorganism’s need. A general cultivation medium for S. elongatus PCC7942 named BG-11 had been developed and is a standard prescription. However, many biochemical researchers still want to figure out a new recipe to make a new concentration ratio of ten ingredients to let the cyanobacteria grow faster and efficiently. Nowadays, with the advanced of nano and micro technology techniques, many experiments can be conducted on the small area or chips with a little restriction especially in biochemical or biomedical experiments used the MEMS techniques. In experiments, we would like to know the influence of each ingredient to the growth effect of cyanobacteria, therefore, we used the UV lithography to fabricate the concentration gradient generator (CGG) mold and cultivated gene transfer cyanobacteria pcc7942 in PDMS made chambers by using a high throughput micro channel design. Compared to conventional methods by cultivated manually in large amount of medium in big beakers, we used the microfluidics concentration gradient system to cultivated automatically and only with small amount of medium in biochips. It saves the experimental costs and areas as well. In this chip, we can observe six results detected by absorbance value (Aλ) with different concentration in same ingredient at the same time in 1D chips. Besides, we also add the nutrients such as vitamin and urea to cultivate cyanobacteria to find out whether those exotic nutrients will stimulate the growth of cyanobacteria. Finally, we will show the growth data cultivated by traditional flask methods to certify the similar trend with the cultivation in microfluidics chips.