Microorganisms culture on polyvinyl alcohol) hydrogel-coated paper

摘要

Paper is ubiquitous, inexpensive, recyclable, and easy to store, transport, manipulate, and dispose. Single- or multi-channels can be fabricated on paper for creating liquid-transportable sensor by using a patterning technique to separate hydrophobic/hydrophilic areas. We considered that we would apply this useful technique to bacterial cultures in combination with poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogels under various conditions. Mostly, agar is used as a container of nutrients for general bacterial culture. However, agar gels of itself below room temperature as is inappropriate in application to ink-jet printer for dispensing on paper. In our research, PVA hydrogel was used as a container of nutrients instead. Hydrogels are formed by crosslinking polymer chains through physical, ionic or covalent interactions, and are well known for their ability to absorb much water. Here, PVA hydrogel was applied to be printed on filter paper for culturing bacterial cells by using inkjet printer. PVA hydrogel has agelling property that is not affected by temperature. The result showed that a mixture of 2.5% of PVA and 5.0% of Adipic acid dihydrazide (ADH) with nutrients was successfully printed. In addition, bacterial growth on the mixture by manual operation wasconfirmed. Accordingly, we expect that this technology will be applied to the development of a paper-based microbiological culture system.