UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

Browse

Filters

20151

Settings

Author: search.filters.author.Wolfram, Christopher JamesSubject: search.filters.subject.microfluidic

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Analysis of Flow-Based Microfluidic Gradient Generators for the Study of Bacterial Chemotaxis
    (2015) Wolfram, Christopher James; Rubloff, Gary W; Material Science and Engineering; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Chemotaxis is a phenomenon which enables cells to sense concentrations of certain chemical species in their microenvironment and move towards chemically favorable regions. This behavior is best understood in the bacteria Escherichia coli, which exhibits chemotaxis towards a variety of energy sources and signaling molecules. Recent advances in microbiology have engineered the chemotactic properties of bacteria to perform novel functions, but traditional methods of characterizing chemotaxis are not sufficient for such complex applications. The field of microfluidics offers solutions in the form of gradient generators. Many of these gradient generators are flow-based, where a chemical species diffuses across a solution moving through a microchannel. A microfluidic gradient generator was explored as a chemotaxis platform. Sources of error during experimental operation and methods of mitigating this error were demonstrated, and the fundamental theory behind these devices was examined. These devices were determined to be inadequate for the study of bacterial chemotaxis.