A low-cost, open-source evolutionary bioreactor and its educational use
Vishhvaan Gopalakrishnan, Dena Crozier, Kyle J. Card, Lacy D. Chick, Nikhil Krishnan, Erin McClure, Julia Pelesko, Drew F. K. Williamson, Daniel Nichol, Soumyajit Mandal, Robert A. Bonomo, Jacob G. Scott
Abstract
A morbidostat is a bioreactor that uses antibiotics to control the growth of bacteria, making it well-suited for studying the evolution of antibiotic resistance. However, morbidostats are often too expensive to be used in educational settings. Here we present a low-cost morbidostat called the EVolutionary biorEactor (EVE) that can be built by students with minimal engineering and programming experience. We describe how we validated EVE in a real classroom setting by evolving replicate Escherichia coli populations under chloramphenicol challenge, thereby enabling students to learn about bacterial growth and antibiotic resistance.