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Science 1 July 2005:
Vol. 309. no. 5731, pp. 137 - 140
DOI: 10.1126/science.1109173
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Reports

Long-Term Monitoring of Bacteria Undergoing Programmed Population Control in a Microchemostat

Frederick K. Balagaddé,1*{dagger} Lingchong You,2{dagger}{ddagger} Carl L. Hansen,1§ Frances H. Arnold,2 Stephen R. Quake1*||

Using an active approach to preventing biofilm formation, we implemented a microfluidic bioreactor that enables long-term culture and monitoring of extremely small populations of bacteria with single-cell resolution. We used this device to observe the dynamics of Escherichia coli carrying a synthetic "population control" circuit that regulates cell density through a feedback mechanism based on quorum sensing. The microfluidic bioreactor enabled long-term monitoring of unnatural behavior programmed by the synthetic circuit, which included sustained oscillations in cell density and associated morphological changes, over hundreds of hours.

1 Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
2 Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.

* Present address: Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

{dagger} These authors contributed equally to this work.

{ddagger} Present address: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.

§ Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.

|| To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: quake{at}stanford.edu

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