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Construction of a microrobot system using magnetotactic bacteria for the separation of Staphylococcus aureus

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Abstract

Magnetotactic bacteria exhibit superiority over other bacteria in fabricating microrobots because of their high motility and convenient controllability. In this study, a microrobot system is constructed using magnetotactic bacteria MO-1 and applied in pathogenic separation. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated using Staphylococcus aureus. The MO-1 magnetotactic bacterial microrobots are fabricated by binding magnetotactic bacteria MO-1 with their rabbit anti-MO-1 polyclonal antibodies. The efficient binding of MO-1 magnetotactic bacterial microrobots to Staphylococcus aureus is corroborated by phase contrast microscopic and transmission electron microscopic analyses. Further, a microfluidic chip is designed and produced, and the MO-1 microrobots are magnetically guided toward a sample pool in the chip. In the sample pool, Staphylococcus aureus samples are loaded on the microrobots and then carried away to a detection pool in the chip, suggesting the microrobots have successfully carried and separated pathogen. This study is the first to demonstrate bacterial microrobots carrying pathogens and more importantly, it reflects the great potential of using magnetotactic bacteria to develop magnetic-guided, auto-propelled microrobots for pathogen isolation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the State Key Program of National Natural Science of China (51037006). We would like to acknowledge Dr. Haiying Shen (National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China) for contribution to the fabrication of microfluidic chip. We acknowledge Xin Wang for her contribution to the computer program of magnetic field control system. We also wish to thank Dr. Qiufeng Ma and Dr. Weidong Pan for their discussions and suggestions in the process of the experiment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Bioelectromagnetism, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190, Beijing, China

    Chang-You Chen, Chuan-Fang Chen, Lin-Jie Chen & Tao Song

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049, Beijing, China

    Chang-You Chen & Lin-Jie Chen

  3. France-China Bio-Mineralization and Nano-Structures Laboratory, 100193, Beijing, China

    Chang-You Chen, Chuan-Fang Chen, Lin-Jie Chen, Long-Fei Wu & Tao Song

  4. The 306 Hospital, Beijing, 100101, China

    Yong Yi

  5. Laboratoire de Chimie Bactérienne, Institut de Microbiologie de la Méditerranée, CNRS UMR7283, Aix-Marseille University, F-13402, Marseille, Cedex 20, France

    Long-Fei Wu

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  1. Chang-You Chen
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  2. Chuan-Fang Chen
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Correspondence to Tao Song.

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ESM 1 (Online Resource 1 and Online Resource 2)

(DOCX 650 kb)

(Online Resource 3) The movie describes that MO-1 microrobots which were not loaded with S. aureus swam from pool M to pool S in a microfluidic chip under the control of applied magnetic field. It corresponds to the process of Fig. 5(a). (MPG 9690 kb)

(Online Resource 4) The video showed that MO-1 microrobots has transported S. aureus from pool S to pool D under the control. It corresponds to the process of Fig. 5(b-e). (MPG 6330 kb)

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Chen, CY., Chen, CF., Yi, Y. et al. Construction of a microrobot system using magnetotactic bacteria for the separation of Staphylococcus aureus . Biomed Microdevices 16, 761–770 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-014-9880-2

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