Intestine Simulator Bioreactor

thingiverse

In the human body, the largest amount of microorganisms is found in the large intestine due to the favorable characteristics for their survival, such as the slow movement rate, pH and nutrients availability. The large intestine carries more than 101² microorganisms per body gram. An important analysis to be carried out with genetically engineered probiotics is how they respond to the diversity of microorganisms present in the gut’s microbiome. For this analysis to be performed reliably and without the use of animals in initial stages of research, it was necessary to construct and model a bioreactor that resembles the human intestine and that has the ability to simulate, as closely as possible, the intestinal conditions. We designed our bioreactor to simulate the three parts of the large intestine, proximal, transverse and distal colon. The widely used systems for bowel simulation are systems with a single reactor, continuous systems with one or more reactors, and artificial digestive systems (involving the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine). Batch fermentative systems are more difficult to control and are used for short-lived experiments, depending on the inoculum rate and rate of substrate consumption. Continuous systems are used for conducting long-term tests so that multi-stages are very interesting for the different parts of the intestine, which reaches the steady state becomes reproducible. As a way of describing more efficiently the intestinal characteristics, a different reactor model was proposed, which will be divided into three parts: with piston flow as it occurs in the intestine, continuous mode of operation, sample withdrawal, control pH, temperature control system and also with proportional dimensions to real ones. To avoid washing the microorganisms, a porous support was used in the first part of the reactor. More information in <http://2018.igem.org/Team:Unesp_Brazil/Description>