Exposure to live bacteria and accumulation of dead bacteria during bactericidal processes can cause bacterial infectious diseases, implant failure, and antibacterial surface deterioration. Microcapsules with asymmetrically distributed, funnel-shaped pores, which are capable of capturing, retaining, and killing bacteria are developed, offering a solution to bacterial contamination in liquids. It is found that bacterial isolation inside microcapsules is mainly driven by the bacteria's own motility and the microcapsules' geometry. After entry into the microcapsule cavity, the bacteria are stably retained inside. The microcapsules shield surrounding cells from exposure to bacterial toxins, as demonstrated by the coculture of rat embryonic fibroblast cells with microcapsules loaded with live Escherichia coli. The microcapsules can be enhanced with a bactericidal coating covering only the interior cavity. This confines the bacteria-killing process, thereby further increasing biocompatibility. The microcapsules may offer a viable bacteria combatant approach as a potentially advantageous method to eradicate bacterial contamination.
Droplet-based microfluidics have emerged as an important tool for diverse biomedical and biological applications including, but not limited to, drug screening, cellular analysis, and bottom-up synthetic biology. Each microfluidic water-in-oil droplet contains a well-defined biocontent that, following its manipulation/maturation, has to be released into a physiological environment toward possible end-user investigations. Despite the progress made in recent years, considerable challenges still loom at achieving a precise control over the content release with sufficient speed and sensitivity. Here, we present a quantitative study in which we compare the effectiveness and biocompatibility of chemical and physical microfluidic release methods. We show the advantages of electrocoalescence of water-in-oil droplets in terms of high-throughput release applications. Moreover, we apply programmable DNA nanotechnology to achieve a segregation of the biochemical content within the droplets for the controlled filtration of the encapsulated materials. We envision that the developed bifunctional microfluidic approach, capable of content segregation and selective release, will expand the microfluidic toolbox for cell biology, synthetic biology, and biomedical applications.
The extracellular matrix (ECM) plays an immense role in the homeostasis of tissues and organs, can function as a barrier for infectious agents, but is also exploited by pathogens during infection. Therefore, the development of well‐defined 3D ECM models in the form of microcapsules to elucidate the interactions between ECM components and pathogens in confinement and study disease infectivity is important, albeit challenging. Current limitations are mainly attributed to the lack of biocompatible methods for the production of protein‐based microcapsules. Herein, hollow ECM‐based microcapsules from laminin‐111 or laminin‐111/collagen IV are generated to investigate the behavior of organisms within confined 3D extracellular matrices. Microcapsules are created using water‐in‐oil emulsion droplets stabilized by block copolymer surfactants as templates for the charge‐mediated attraction of laminin or laminin‐collagen proteins to the droplets’ inner periphery, allowing for the formation of modular ECM‐based microcapsules with tunable biophysical and biochemical properties and organism encapsulation. The release of E. coli‐laden ECM‐based protein microcapsules into a physiological environment revealed differences in the dynamic behavior of E. coli depending on the constitution of the surrounding ECM protein matrix. The developed ECM‐based protein microcapsules have the potential to be implemented in several biomedical applications, including the design of in vitro infection models.
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