EMU: acquisition of a cell sorter equipment for the Department of Chemical Engineering at EPUSP

Abstract

The cell sorter flow cytometry equipment proposed in this project allows individual cell-level analysis of microorganism, yeast, fungal and animal or plant cell populations. Because it is a high-performance equipment, in each analysis data are collected from hundreds of thousands of organisms. This characterization of the physiological variability of a population is of fundamental importance for the study of the dynamics of populations of pure cultures or of microbial consortia in processes of industrial and environmental biotechnology. The important feature of this equipment is the function cell sorter, which allows to select organisms of the population with specific characteristics defined by the researcher. This tool will be of fundamental importance to accelerate the selection of strains and variants of organisms that are more efficient for a given process catalysis. In the case of working with consortia, this tool will allow isolating subpopulations of interest for a more detailed study of their biological functions. This equipment will benefit all biotechnology projects underway in the Department, including bioreactor development work for the treatment of solid waste from the sugarcane industry, extraction of basic metals from copper mining tailings, bioremediation of organic and inorganic pollutants, fermentation for the production of second generation ethanol, etc. Current projects that will benefit from this equipment include FAPESP/NERC 2015/50684-9 Sustainable gas pathways for Brazil: From microcosm to macrocosm, FAPESP / SABESP 2013/50435-3 Membrane separation systems for public water supply: mechanisms for project contracting and Treatment of contaminated groundwater, BNDES/VALE/USP Recovery of copper mining tailings. (AU)