from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Photoactive nanoparticles have recently gained a lot of attention as alternative antimicrobial agents since their antimicrobial properties can be enhanced by illumination. The stable and reproducible application of these conditions is crucial in order to assess the antimicrobial effect of nanoparticles, illumination and the combination of these conditions on cells. Furthermore, the reproducibility of cell growth data is also essential to avoid measurement variability influencing statistical analysis. In this work we designed custom 3D-printed laboratory accessory for a bioreactor that ensured stable illumination of cell suspensions and enabled reproducible growth curves under the same growth conditions. The reproducibility of measurements was tested on Escherichia coli bacteria grown under illumination, with the addition of commercial ZnO nanoparticles, and with the combination of both factors. All tests showed a notable improvement in the reproducibility of bacterial growth curves and standard deviation of the measured data reduced below the documented instrument precision.
Keywords: 3D printing, bioreactors, bacteria, ZnO nanoparticles, photocatalysis, reproducibility© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.