Vetiver is the only grass cultivated worldwide for the root essential oil, which is a mixture of sesquiterpene alcohols and hydrocarbons, used extensively in perfumery and cosmetics. Light and transmission electron microscopy demonstrated the presence of bacteria in the cortical parenchymatous essential oil-producing cells and in the lysigen lacunae in close association with the essential oil. This finding and the evidence that axenic Vetiver produces in vitro only trace amounts of oil with a strikingly different composition compared with the oils from in vivo Vetiver plants stimulated the hypothesis of an involvement of these bacteria in the oil metabolism. We used culture-based and culture-independent approaches to analyse the microbial community of the Vetiver root. Results demonstrate a broad phylogenetic spectrum of bacteria, including alpha-, beta- and gamma-Proteobacteria, high-G+C-content Gram-positive bacteria, and microbes belonging to the Fibrobacteres/Acidobacteria group. We isolated root-associated bacteria and showed that most of them are able to grow by using oil sesquiterpenes as a carbon source and to metabolize them releasing into the medium a large number of compounds typically found in commercial Vetiver oils. Several bacteria were also able to induce gene expression of a Vetiver sesquiterpene synthase. These results support the intriguing hypothesis that bacteria may have a role in essential oil biosynthesis opening the possibility to use them to manoeuvre the Vetiver oil molecular structure.

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In this work a polymer lab-on-a-chip (LOC), fabricated through MEMS technology, was employed to execute a genetic protocol for the Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) detection. The LOC was made in Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and has two levels: the lower one for the insertion and mixing of the reagents, the upper one for the interfacing with the DNA microarray chip. The hereditary hearing loss was chosen as case of study, since the demand for testing such a particular disorder is high and genetics behind the condition is quite clear. The Arrayed Primer EXtension (APEX) genetic protocol was implemented on the LOC to analyze the SNPs. A low density (for detection of up to 10 mutations) and a high density microarray chips (for detection of 245 mutations in 12 genes), containing the primers for the extension, were employed to carry out the APEX reaction on the LOC. Both the microarray chips provide a signal to noise ratio and efficiency comparable with a detection obtained in a conventional protocol in standard conditions. Moreover, significant reduction of the employed PCR volume (from 30 μL to 10 μL) was obtained using the low density chip.

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