Droplet-Based Microfluidics in Single-Bacterium Analysis: Advancements in Cultivation, Detection, and Application

Microorganisms exhibit remarkable diversity, making their comprehensive characterization essential for understanding ecosystem functioning and safeguarding human health. However, traditional culture-based methods entail inherent limitations for resolving microbial heterogeneity, isolating slow-growing microorganisms, and accessing uncultivated microbes. Conversely, droplet-based microfluidics enables a high-throughput and precise platform for single-bacterium manipulation by physically isolating individual cells within microdroplets. This technology presents a transformative approach to overcoming the constraints of conventional techniques. This review outlines the fundamental principles, recent research advances, and key application domains of droplet-based microfluidics, with a particular focus on innovations in single-bacterium encapsulation, sorting, cultivation, and functional analysis. Applications such as antibiotic susceptibility testing, enzyme-directed evolution screening, microbial interaction studies, and the cultivation of novel bacterial species are discussed, underscoring the technology's broad potential in microbiological research and biotechnology.