Microfluidic and mathematical modeling of aquatic microbial communities
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REVIEW
Microfluidic and mathematical modeling of aquatic microbial communities Fangchen Liu 1 & Andrea Giometto 2 & Mingming Wu 1 Received: 22 September 2020 / Revised: 5 November 2020 / Accepted: 19 November 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Aquatic microbial communities contribute fundamentally to biogeochemical transformations in natural ecosystems, and disruption of these communities can lead to ecological disasters such as harmful algal blooms. Microbial communities are highly dynamic, and their composition and function are tightly controlled by the biophysical (e.g., light, fluid flow, and temperature) and biochemical (e.g., chemical gradients and cell concentration) parameters of the surrounding environment. Due to the large number of environmental factors involved, a systematic understanding of the microbial community-environment interactions is lacking. In this article, we show that microfluidic platforms present a unique opportunity to recreate well-defined environmental factors in a laboratory setting in a high throughput way, enabling quantitative studies of microbial communities that are amenable to theoretical modeling. The focus of this article is on aquatic microbial communities, but the microfluidic and mathematical models discussed here can be readily applied to investigate other microbiomes. Keywords Microbial community . Microfluidics . Mathematical modeling . Algal bloom . Phytoplankton
Introduction Microbial communities are important players for the sustainability of aquatic ecological systems: being responsible for primary production of organic carbon, decomposition of organic matter, and recycling of nutrients. They are essential to ensure the robustness and adaptability of aquatic ecosystems functions. It is well established that the composition of a set of micro-organisms of a specific body of water (e.g., lake or pond) is shaped by the abiotic parameters of the space they live in [1], including light, temperature, nutrient availability, and pH (see Fig. 1a). Altering abiotic parameters can lead to Published in the topical collection featuring Female Role Models in Analytical Chemistry. * Mingming Wu [email protected] 1
Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
2
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
serious negative impact to the stability of the microbial community. A particular example is the problem of harmful algal blooms (HABs), where certain microalgae or cyanobacteria suddenly outgrow other species and end up dominating aquatic microbial communities. The toxins produced by HABs endanger other aquatic animals such as fishes, and deplete water resources both for drinking water and recreational uses. Even though the occurrence of HABs is increasing due to climate change and population expansion [2–4], quantitative understanding of how environmental factors break the balance within microbial communities is largely unknown. In this pe
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