Spring 2020 – Hydrogel Bioreactor System

The goal of this project is to develop a bioreactor system capable of maintaining the culture of anaerobic bacteria in an affordable manner. Current methods of anaerobic bacterial culture require either expensive equipment or do not adequately maintain the diversity of bacterial cultures outside of their normal environmental conditions, such as in the gastrointestinal tract. This create a major limitation for research on bacterial cultures. Our group has developed glucose oxidase loaded gelatin micro-particles to eliminate oxygen in culture and collaborations have demonstrated the feasibility of this material to successfully culture strict anaerobes without the aid of external factors such as anaerobic chambers.