By modifying the existing microfabrication procedures, we
were able to successfully deposit uniform films of paraffin on
the surface of a COC wafers. Furthermore, we were able to
pattern the films and to incorporate them into a culture-based
microfluidic biochip. In the future, we anticipate that the procedures
for patterning paraffin developed in this work will be
used to create a single biochip containing an array of different culture media to simultaneously track multiple microbial populations
in a single environmental sample. One approach would
be to “dope” paraffin with chemicals that stimulate or repress
the growth of mycobacteria such as hydrophobic petroleum compounds
or antibiotics, respectively. By using an array of different
media segments, future biochips could be used to determine
the relative abundance of target microorganisms with selected
phenotypic traits (e.g., antibiotic resistant mycobacteria) in addition
to routine identification of entire populations (e.g., total
mycobacteria).