放线菌是一类产生丰富天然活性物质的重要微生物资源，目前约75%的抗生素是由放线菌产生的。但迄今为止，专家普遍认为99%以上的放线菌还没有被成功分离培养，传统的技术也不能很好地筛选出新的天然产物，这主要是因为目前的筛选技术通量有限且常常分离培养出已知的菌株。为了克服这些缺陷，本项目拟引入近年发展起来的高通量微流控液滴技术到放线菌的培养和分离中，主要包括高通量地将放线菌孢子悬浮液形成包裹单个孢子的微流控液滴、利用微液滴混合技术高通量地筛选培养条件、通过微流控芯片实时成像检测触发放线菌的无标记高通量分选，实现放线菌的快速分离。本项目的研究目标是将微流控液滴作为放线菌的理想培养器，发展出高通量的放线菌的培养和筛选平台，发现新的稀有放线菌，为新型天然产物的发掘奠定基础。

Actinomycetes are very important microbial resources which produce natural active products, and about 75% of antibiotics are produced by the actinomycetes. While it is generally assumed that more than 99% of Actinomycetes species have not been cultivated so far, classic screening approaches fail to supply new substances, often due to limited throughput and frequent rediscovery of already known strains. To overcome these restrictions, we introduce high-throughput microfluidics droplets to the cultivation of Actinomycetes. Firstly, we obtain the high-throughput pL-droplets from a spore suspension that can subsequently be incubated for days to weeks. Moreover, we introduce triggered imaging with real-time image-based droplet classification as a novel universal method for pL-droplet sorting. Growth-dependent droplet sorting at high frequencies is performed for label-free enrichment and extraction of microcultures. The combination of both cultivation of Actinomycetes pL-droplets and real-time detection of growing Actinomycetes has great potential in screening for yet unknown species as well as their undiscovered natural products.