Identification Of Biofuel Producing Bacteria Through Temperature Resistance

By Paul Held Ph. D, Senior Scientist, Applications Dept., BioTek Instruments, Inc.

The use of microplates is driven by a demand to increase throughput in many different biological systems. While microplate reader design has provided for elevated temperature control for some time that was sufficient for typical cell-based studies, an extended range was needed for some biological applications. For example, bacterial strains useful for the generation of biofuels require bacteria that are temperature resistant. The search for these strains requires that growth curves of multiple bacterial clones be monitored at high temperatures over long periods. Towards that end, BioTek has improved their microplate readers' incubator design to accommodate temperature control up to < 68ºC. Here we demonstrate the utility of the PowerWave™ XS Microplate Reader to perform absorbance measurements at high temperatures.