Microbial consortia are fascinating yet barely understood biological systems with an elusive intrinsic complexity. Studying microbial consortia and the interactions of their members is of major importance for the understanding, engineering and control of synthetic and natural microbial consortia. Microfluidic cultivation and analysis devices are versatile tools for the study of microbial interactions at the single-cell level. While there is a vast amount of literature on microfluidics for the investigation of monocultures only few studies on co-cultures have been conducted in this context. Here we give an overview of different microfluidic single-cell cultivation tools for the analysis of microbial consortia with a focus on their physiology, growth dynamics and cellular interactions. Finally, central challenges and perspectives for the future application of microfluidic tools for microbial consortia investigations will be given.

中文翻译：

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用于微生物共培养物相互作用研究的微流体培养和分析工具。

微生物联盟以其难以捉摸的内在复杂性吸引着令人着迷但鲜为人知的生物系统。研究微生物菌群及其成员之间的相互作用对于理解，工程和控制合成和天然微生物菌群具有重要意义。微流体培养和分析设备是用于研究单细胞水平微生物相互作用的多功能工具。尽管有大量关于微流控技术的文献用于研究单细胞培养，但在这种情况下，仅有很少的关于共培养的研究。在这里，我们概述了用于分析微生物群落的不同微流控单细胞培养工具，重点是它们的生理学，生长动力学和细胞相互作用。最后，