Abstract − Analytical Sciences, 33(12), 1435 (2017).
Microfluidic Platform for Analyzing the Thermotaxis of C. elegans in a Linear Temperature Gradient
Sunhee YOON,*,** Hailing PIAO,*** Tae-Joon JEON,*,** and Sun Min KIM**,***
* Department of Biological Engineering, Inha University, Incheon 22212, South Korea
**WCSL of Integrated Human Airway-on-a-Chip, Inha University, Incheon 22212, South Korea
***Department of Mechanical Engineering, Inha University, Incheon 22212, South Korea
**WCSL of Integrated Human Airway-on-a-Chip, Inha University, Incheon 22212, South Korea
***Department of Mechanical Engineering, Inha University, Incheon 22212, South Korea
Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), which shares a considerable amount of characteristics with human genes is one of the important model organisms for the study of behavioral responses. Thermotaxis is a representative behavior response of C. elegans; C. elegans stores the cultivation temperature in thermosensory neurons and moves to the cultivation temperature region in a temperature variation. In this study, we developed a microfluidic system for effective thermotaxis analysis of C. elegans. The microfluidic channel was fabricated using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) by soft lithography process. The temperature gradient (15 – 20°C) was generated in the microchannel and controlled by Peltier modules attached to the bottom of the channel. The thermotaxis of wild type (N2), tax-4(p678) and ttx-7(nj50) mutants were effectively analyzed using this microfluidic system. We believe that this system can be employed as a basic platform for studying the neural circuit of C. elegans responding to external stimuli.
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