​Rapid-results testing has become an increasingly important part of our fast-paced world. Utilizing droplet microfluidics allows for quicker point-of-care testing (POCT) but is not always as accurate, and currently requires an amount of external effort for proper handling.The Integrated Portable Droplets system, or iPODs, developed by researchers from the Single-Cell Center at Qingdao Institut...

Effective, accurate and quick ways to screen and sort microbes are in short supply. Most methods available now rely on additional labeling steps to sort bacteria, which are typically time-consuming and cannot work well for industrial-scale breeding.The need for accuracy and speed are met using a label-free droplet-based integrated microfluidic platform that screens bacterial growth based on phe...

A new platform established by researchers at the Single-Cell Center, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QIBEBT/CAS) improves accuracy, throughput, and stability in profiling dynamic metabolic features of cells – the basic building blocks of all life forms on Earth.Their study, published in Advanced Science on Mar. 4, describes how this ...

Researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have proposed a new technology, called optical tweezer-assisted pool-screening and single-cell isolation (OPSI) system, which achieves 99.7% purity of sorting target cells, with all done in real-time.The study was published in Lab on a Chip on Nov. 29.Versatile, facile...

The identification, sorting and export of single bacterial cells rather than just populations of them has long been incredibly complex, expensive and often just does not work without damaging the cells.Now, researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators have proposed a new system called "Eas...

Currently, the best way for scientists to isolate a specific microbe with a particular metabolic function from an environment is to take a sample of cells, culture them, and then screen them for the desired cell functions.This method has several limitations. First, scientists have not identified most cells in nature, limiting the results to previously cultured cells. Second, the way cells behav...

​Knowing whether or not marine microbes engage in photosynthesis — the use of sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into energy — could help scientist to learn if ocean bacteria play a role in the global carbon cycle.However, most marine microbes remain unstudied, in part because they do not grow under laboratory conditions, which limits the scientific community’s knowledge on if these ...

The formation of persisters is an important feature of bacteria like Escherichia coli (E. coli). These noxious cells, being able to go dormant, are highly resistant to antimicrobial treatments and crucially account for various relapsing chronic infections with common symptoms such as severe stomach pain, vomiting and bloody diarrhea.Formation of persister cells is thought to be one of the most ...

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), the bacteria that can cause human gastritis, peptic ulcers and stomach cancer, infects about half of the world's population. It is essential to quickly identify the infection and select the right combination of sensitive antibiotics. Current tools, however, are limited, mainly because H. pylori are slow growing and hard to cultivate.Researchers from the Qingdao ...

​Raman spectroscopy is a scattering technique that relies on the inelastic scattering of photons. The excitation of molecular bonds results in the shifts of the energy of laser photons and thus frequency change of the incident light. Therefore, a compound can have a specific Raman spectrum, while a Single-cell Raman Spectrum (SCRS) can depict the overall profile of metabolites in the cell, i.e...