Detection of activity of single microalgae cells in a new microfluidic cell capturing chip

The analysis of single microalgae cell plays a very important role in understanding the activity of microalgae cell. In this paper, a new method of capturing and monitoring a microalgae cell is presented. This method uses the surface of an air bubble formed in an aqueous solution in a microchannel to capture a microalgae cell. The aliveness of the captured microalgae cell can be monitored quantitatively by measuring chlorophyll fluorescence intensity of the microalgae cell. To demonstrate the performance of this method, two species of microalgae cells, Dunaliella salina and Tetraselmis Chui, were taken as samples. The effect of pH on the cell capture was studied experimentally. The cells were treated by NaClO or Formaldehyde solutions of different concentrations. The kinetics of the photosynthesis activity of the captured single microalgae cells was investigated under different treatment conditions. The results show that the viability of single microalgae cells can be studied individually and accurately by this method.