Microfluidic System for Spatiotemporal Investigations of Cellular Dynamics

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AbstractEfforts to probe and modeling the dynamics of processes of biological cells have been hampered by the lack of experimental systems to both control the chemical environment of a cell in space and time and to measure the response of a cell to such chemical stimuli. This project will develop a new instrument to precisely manipulate the spatiotemporal chemical environment of a cell. The new system will integrate microfluidics, digitally controlled electromechanical systems, microscopy, and computer vision for observing cells as input-output dynamic systems. Varying the relative pressures of the reservoirs feeding two confluent channels of a Y-shaped microfluidic network will cause the interface between the two laminar streams in the output channel to move. Closed-loop pressure control will enable the rapid control of the fluid interface automatically for the precise manipulation of a cell's chemical environment. The complete system will include an optical microscope with a fluorescence imaging camera to observe the interface and cells in the outflow channel. A vision system will enable detection of the interface position and of the cell's position and other responses. To demonstrate the utility of the system as a biology research tool, we will investigate dynamic cell motion in chemotaxis.