A complex of techniques for soil-microbiological and agrochemical / agrophysical monitoring has been developed on an autonomous telemeteric lensless microscope / active chip, which includes a number of fundamentally new possibilities and methods

A complex of techniques for soil-microbiological and agrochemical / agrophysical monitoring has been developed on an autonomous telemeteric lensless microscope / active chip, which includes a number of fundamentally new possibilities and methods. Firstly, an active CMOS-based chip was designed that combines the fundamental features and elements of: the soil chambers and fouling Rossi-Cholodny slide, a MALDI target chip, cell counting chambers with coordinate grids, ocular granulometric geological counters, devices for Perfil’ev-Gabe capillary microscopy (based on the microfluidic principles), and a lensless fluorescent microscope on a chip (according to A. Ozkan). Secondly, “triple multiparametric identification” was introduced, based on the combined analysis of: morphometric and spectrocolorimetric data (locally visualized in the pseudo-spectral form) / spectrofluorimetric data of lensless microscopy, mass-spectra for «MALDI biotyping», the signal from the electrode grids in the low-frequency range. As a result, a pool of the natural descriptors (non-surrogate pedological physical and chemical database keys) is obtained, and possessing an independent value for “data mining” as telemetric “big data”. Thirdly, a comparative data analysis was introduced within the framework of the SOGDA approaches (“if and only if all the signals in the complex, when compared with the database of the reference “fingerprints”, give an identically high probability of assigning the sample studied to a given soil type, certain microbial community or a specific systematic niche, the chip is identified as a carrier of the sample corresponding to this definition; while in the absence of identification by the majority descriptor or a complex of its variables, the decision to classify the sample based on the available data pool can not be made»). Fourthly, specific installations for monitoring and calibrating of the lensless chip were designed. Fifthly, to simplify and improve the ergonomics of the data / signal acquisition, telemetry of the active chips with RFID and a fine-tuning receiver was also introduced; hence, it is possible to use the signal data after digitization without compression as the source of kinetic descriptors for the processes occurring at the chip-soil interfaces.

Lens-less microscopy for soil microbiology / soil science and foundation monitoring (reference list — upd.: 2023):

Gradov O.V. (2012). Digital lab-on-a-chip as analog of soil chambers and Rossi-Cholodny slides. In VII Int. Symp. «Cooperation in Biotechnology, Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and Food in the 7th Framework Programme», A. Bach Institute of Biochemistry, Moscow, p. 17-18.

Orekhov F., Gradov O. (2022). Tensoresistor-based microfluidics and telemetric strain-gauge lensless detectors as specialized labs-on-a-chip for soil mechanics and foundation monitoring. Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, 180:371–380.

Orekhov F., Gradov O. (2022). Automated soil microbiology using lens-less and LDI MS imaging with buried slides. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 247:471–479.

Gradov O.V. (2022). Towards comprehensive environmental studies of the physiology and biochemistry of microorganisms based on mass spectrometric decoding of coupled inter-specific and populational processes in the frameworks of the geochemical ecology on a chip. In 3rd International Webinar on Mass Spectrometry & Analytical Techniques (April 18-19, 2022, Greenville, USA, virtual event), p. 14–15.

Orekhov F., Gradov O. (2023) Target Chip Based Single-Cell Biotyping and Telemetric Bioluminescence Lensless Microscopy of the Buried Sandwich-Slides as a Novel Way for Measurement, Mapping and Molecular Imaging of Biodegradation / Biofouling of Plastic Surfaces in Real Soils. Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering (in press).