Microfluidics for Trapping and Interogating Yeast
We build a microfluidic device for traping yeast cells and performing automated switching between nutrient rich and nutrient limited conditions. The device consists of a 4x4 array of chambers (16 total), which were loaded from top to bottom and perfused with media from left to right. Cells were confined within the chamber by adjusting the height to match the height of the yeast cells as well as enclosed in a low concentration agarose gel. The yeast cells were tracked using timelapse imaging of fusion proteins during yeast budding. Processing bodies (p-bodies) were observed to hover near the bud site approximatly 30 minutes before the bud was observed and undergo unidirectional transport from the mother to the daughter cell during mitosis. The behaviour was confirmed to be dependent on the Myo4p/She2p RNA transport machinery by checking knockout strains.
The microfluidic design is available here (DXF).
More details about the work can be found here