High-throughput screening of microalgal communities using water-in-oil droplet microfluidics and long-read metabarcoding

This study aimed to evaluate the applicability of a water-in-oil droplet (WODL)-based microfluidic cultivation system to high-throughput screening of microalgae. Mixed-species microalgal communities were encapsulated in individual droplets at the single-cell level, and the effects of droplet cultivation on species diversity were examined. Two experiments were conducted: one using a mock community assembled from monocultured microalgal strains, and the other using a field community derived from natural seawater. Long-read metabarcoding targeting the 16S rRNA gene was applied to analyze community composition and diversity. The results demonstrated that the droplet-based method is more effective than conventional bulk cultivation in maintaining microalgal species diversity. This BioProject provides the sequencing data generated from both experiments to support the development of droplet-based high-throughput screening platforms for microalgal biodiversity research.