Recent advances of integrated microfluidic systems for fungal and bacterial analysis

Precise manipulation, fast cultivation, and sensitive detection of fungi and bacteria are vital for behavior monitoring, phenotypic identification, physiology assessment, and molecular analysis in the fields of microbiology and biomedicine. Microfluidic systems could be patterned with tailored microstructures to separate the fungal and bacterial populations into small groups or even single cells, and be equipped with multiple sensing techniques for high-throughput and high-content bioanalysis of their phenotypes, behaviors, morphologies, subcellular structures, genes, proteins and metabolites. In this review, we first classified the microfluidic structures for the manipulation of fungi and bacteria, including flow-through microchannels, mechanical and biochemical traps, and microdroplets. Then, we described the widely-integrated detection means for the readout of sample parameters, including optical inspection, electrical impedance sensing, and ionization-based spectrometry. Afterwards, we highlighted the bioanalysis application and advances of these integrated microfluidic systems mostly presented in the past three years. In the end, we provided insights into the development tendence of the combination of microfluidic systems and artificial intelligence to analyze fungi and bacteria more automatically, efficiently and accurately.