A microfluidic device for efficient chemical testing using Caenorhabditis elegans

Pengfei Song; Weize Zhang; Alexandre Sobolevski; Kristine Bernard; Siegfried Hekimi; Xinyu Liu

doi:10.1007/s10544-015-9939-8

A microfluidic device for efficient chemical testing using Caenorhabditis elegans

Pengfei Song, Weize Zhang, Alexandre Sobolevski, Kristine Bernard, Siegfried Hekimi, Xinyu Liu^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

McGill University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has been employed as a popular model organism in many fields of biological research. In this paper, we present a microfluidic device for facilitating chemical testing using C. elegans. For testing chemicals on chip, the device houses single nematodes in microfluidic chambers and precisely adjusts the chamber’s chemical environment during experiments. Eight nematodes can be readily loaded into the chambers through separate loading channels in a quick and gentle manner. In addition, a custom-made software with a graphic user interface is also created for quantitative analysis of locomotion parameters (swimming frequency and bend amplitude) of the nematodes in response to chemical stimuli, thus greatly enhancing the efficiency of data collection. We perform proof-of-concept experiments using two chemicals, zinc ion (Zn²⁺) and glucose, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the microfluidic device.

Original language	English
Journal	Biomedical Microdevices
Volume	17
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-015-9939-8
Publication status	Published - Apr 2015
Externally published	Yes

Keywords

Behavior studies
C. elegans
Chemical testing
Image processing
Locomotion
Microfluidics

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10.1007/s10544-015-9939-8

Cite this

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abstract = "The nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has been employed as a popular model organism in many fields of biological research. In this paper, we present a microfluidic device for facilitating chemical testing using C. elegans. For testing chemicals on chip, the device houses single nematodes in microfluidic chambers and precisely adjusts the chamber{\textquoteright}s chemical environment during experiments. Eight nematodes can be readily loaded into the chambers through separate loading channels in a quick and gentle manner. In addition, a custom-made software with a graphic user interface is also created for quantitative analysis of locomotion parameters (swimming frequency and bend amplitude) of the nematodes in response to chemical stimuli, thus greatly enhancing the efficiency of data collection. We perform proof-of-concept experiments using two chemicals, zinc ion (Zn2+) and glucose, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the microfluidic device.",

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AU - Hekimi, Siegfried

AU - Liu, Xinyu

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A microfluidic device for efficient chemical testing using Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

Keywords

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