Formation of artificial, structured microbial consortia (ASMC) by dielectrophoresis

Tissue engineering with electric fields: Immobilization of mammalian cells in multilayer aggregates using dielectrophoresis

“…One of the applications of dielectrophoresis that is currently being explored is its use in the formation of tissues or tissue-like materials from suspensions of cells (Markx and Buckle, 2005). Whilst early work has concentrated on the formation of aggregates of microbial cells (Pohl, 1972; see also Alp et al, 2002;Mason et al, 2005;Verduzco-Luque et al, 2003), more recent is its use in mammalian tissue engineering (Albrecht et al, 2005(Albrecht et al, , 2006Alp et al, 2003;Heida et al, 2001a,b;Ho et al, 2006;Matsue et al, 1997;Sebastian et al, 2006). The dielectrophoretic force is used to guide cells to specific high (positive DEP) or low electric field regions (negative DEP) between (micro)electrodes, either as single cells (Gray et al, 2004;Heida et al, 2001a,b;Yu et al, 2004) or as aggregates (Sebastian et al, 2006;Venkatesh and Markx, 2007).…”

Dielectrophoretic assay of bacterial resistance to antibiotics

“…Betts 1994, Suehiro et al 2003) and separation of bacteria of different species (Markx et al 1996) as well as a method of analysing bacterial properties (e.g. Markx et al 1994, Milner 1998, for the analysis of bacterial motors (Washizu et al 1993;Hughes and Morgan, 1998) and for the construction of microbial consortia (Alp et al 2002). Work has been performed on the separation of viable and non-viable bacteria (e.g.…”

The use of electric fields in tissue engineering

“…23 Although it took a long time before this work was taken up again, in recent years research in this area has gained momentum, with work being done on the construction of tissue-like materials from a variety of cell types. [25][26][27][28][29] Dielectrophoretic spectra of very different cell types are very similar, 30 and the method can be employed with essentially any cell type-microbial, animal or plant-or in fact non-cellular material. [31][32][33] Both negative and positive dielectrophoresis can be used, 32,33 single cell manipulation is possible, [34][35][36][37][38] and aggregate sizes can range from single cells to hundreds of microns.…”

“…For two-dimensional aggregates, in which the cells are in direct contact with the (electrode) surface, surface modification with agents such as fibronectin is often used to promote surface attachment. A variety of gels have also been used, both for 2-and 3-D aggregates; these have included photopolymerisible gels, 26,43,44 agarose 44 and fibrin gels. Other approaches include the use of crosslinking agents.…”