Advantages
- Completely Electricity-Free and Economical: Powered by the motion of a shaker, it requires no additional power sources or wiring.
- Maximized Productivity with a Specialized Plate: Establishes highly productive culture conditions by suppressing medium evaporation while providing a uniform gas supply.
Technology Overview & Background
In shaking culture using flasks or microplates, a persistent problem is that the gas environment inside the vessel deviates from the incubator’s set values due to cellular respiration. This unintended deterioration of the gas environment is considered a limiting factor for cell proliferation and substance productivity. Conventional gas exchange methods relying on filter caps are inefficient due to their dependence on passive diffusion and have not been an adequate solution.
To solve this problem, the inventor developed the Non-electric Bellows Pump (NeBP). NeBP is a gas exchange device that utilizes the shaking energy of an incubator to automatically pump gas. It has been shown to improve culture efficiency by actively circulating gas inside vessels simply by connecting it to existing Erlenmeyer flasks. Furthermore, a gas-controlled microplate was developed to apply the NeBP pump to plate cultures. This plate uniformly distributes the gas supplied from the NeBP to each well while dramatically suppressing medium evaporation with its internal humidifying mechanism.
This enables low-cost and simple high-precision gas environment control in multi-sample screening, which previously required expensive, specialized equipment.
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Data
- When Acetobacter was cultured using the system combining NeBP and the gas-controlled microplate, the production of a useful substance (bacterial cellulose) increased significantly compared to control conditions using commercial plates.
Publication(s)
・DOI: 10.1016/j.bej.2021.108098, 10.1016/j.jbiosc.2022.06.006
Patent(s)
Patents pending (undisclosed)
Principal Investigator & Academic Institution
Dr. Masato Takahashi (University of Tsukuba)
Expectations
The University of Tsukuba is actively seeking partners, such as manufacturers of research consumables and culture equipment, who are interested in this technology and can collaborate on its product development. The “NeBP pump” is also available for provision on a fee basis. We are open to discussions starting with performance evaluations or collaborative research combining technology with your company’s products (e.g., shakers, flasks).
Furthermore, undisclosed data can be shared upon concluding a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with the University of Tsukuba, and direct meetings with the researcher can be arranged.
Project ID:WL-05115