A Simple Microfluidic Chip for Long-Term Growth and Imaging of Caenorhabditis elegans

Summary

The protocol describes a simple microfluidic chip design and microfabrication methodology used to grow C. elegans in presence of a continuous food supply for up to 36 h. The growth and imaging device also enables intermittent long-term high-resolution imaging of cellular and sub-cellular processes during development for several days.

Abstract

Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) have proved to be a valuable model system for studying developmental and cell biological processes. Understanding these biological processes often requires long-term and repeated imaging of the same animal. Long recovery times associated with conventional immobilization methods done on agar pads have detrimental effects on animal health making it inappropriate to repeatedly image the same animal over long periods of time. This paper describes a microfluidic chip design, fabrication method, on-chip C. elegans culturing protocol, and three examples of long-term imaging to study developmental processes in individual animals. The chip, fabricated with polydimethylsiloxane and bonded on a cover glass, immobilizes animals on a glass substrate using an elastomeric membrane that is deflected using nitrogen gas. Complete immobilization of C. elegans enables robust time-lapse imaging of cellular and sub-cellular events in an anesthetic-free manner. A channel geometry with a large cross-section allows the animal to move freely within two partially sealed isolation membranes permitting growth in the channel with a continuous food supply. Using this simple chip, imaging of developmental phenomena such as neuronal process growth, vulval development, and dendritic arborization in the PVD sensory neurons, as the animal grows inside the channel, can be performed. The long-term growth and imaging chip operates with a single pressure line, no external valves, inexpensive fluidic consumables, and utilizes standard worm handling protocols that can easily be adapted by other laboratories using C. elegans.

Introduction

Caenorhabditis elegans has proved to be a powerful model organism to study cell biology, aging, development biology, and neurobiology. Advantages such as its transparent body, short life cycle, easy maintenance, a defined number of cells, homology with several human genes, and well-studied genetics have led to C. elegans becoming a popular model both for fundamental biology discoveries and applied research^1,2. Understanding cell's biological and developmental processes from repeated long-term observation of individual animals can prove to be beneficial. Conventionally, C. elegans....

Protocol

1. Fabrication of growth and imaging device

1. SU8 mold fabrication
   1. Design patterns 1 (flow layer) and 2 (control layer) using rectangular shapes in a word processing software (or a computer-aided design CAD software) and print the photomasks with the help of a laser plotter with a minimum feature size of 8 µm on polyester-based film (Figure 1).
   2. Cut silicon wafers in 2.5 cm × 2.5 cm pieces and clean them with 20% KOH for 1 min. Rinse the wafers in deionized (DI) water. Use one wafer each for the flow and the control layer.
      CAUTION: KOH is corrosive and should be handled wi....

Results

Device characterization: The growth and imaging device consists of two PDMS layers bonded together (Figure 1) using irreversible plasma bonding. The flow layer (pattern 1) which is 10 mm in length and 40 µm or 80 µm in height allows us to grow the animal in liquid culture (Figure 1A). The trapping layer (pattern 2) has a 2 mm wide membrane (Figure 1B) for immobilizing the animal for high-resolution imaging. The mask.......

Discussion

In this paper, a protocol for fabrication and use of a simple microfluidic device for growing C. elegans with constant food supply and high-resolution imaging of a single animal during its development has been described. This fabrication process is simple and can be done in a non-sterile environment. A dust-free environment is critical during fabrication steps. The presence of dust particles would lead to improper contact between the two bonding surfaces, resulting in poor bonding and leakage of the device durin.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
18 G needles	Sigma-Aldrich, Bangalore, India	Gauge 18
3-way stopcock	Cole-Parmer	WW-30600-02	Masterflex fitting with luer lock
CCD camera	Andor Technology	EMCCD C9100-13no
Circuit board film	Fine Line Imaging, Colorado, USA		The designs are printed with 65,024 dots per inch (DPI)
Convection Oven	Meta-Lab Scientific Industries, India	MSI-5
Coverslips	Blue stat microscopic cover glass		22mm x 10Gms
Ethanol	Hi media
Harris uni-core puncher 1mm	Qiagen	Z708801
Hexamethyldisilazane	Sigma-Aldrich, Bangalore, India	440191
Hot plate	IKA	RCT B S 22
Isopropanol	Fisher Scientific	26895
KOH	Fisher Scientific
Laser Scanning Microscope	ZEISS	LSM 5 LIVE
Micropipette tips	Tarsons		0.5-10 µL micropipette tips are used for food supply
Negative Photoresist-1	Microchem	SU8-2025	http://www.microchem.com/Prod-SU82000.htm
Negative Photoresist-2	Microchem	SU8-2050	http://www.microchem.com/Prod-SU82000.htm
Nitrogen gas	Local Supplier	Commercial nitrogen gas	Cylinder volume of 7 cubic meter
PDMS (Curing solution)	Dow Corning Corporation, MI, USA	Sylgard curing solution	curing agent
Petri plates	Praveen Scientific Corporation
Plasma cleaner	Harrick Plasma, NY, USA	PDC-32G
Razor and blades	Lister surgical Blade
Silicon Elastomer (Base)	Dow Corning Corporation, MI, USA	Sylgard 184 base	elastomer base
Silicon tubes	Fisher Scientific		Plastic tubes with the inner diameter 1.59 mm and the outer diameter 3.18 mm
Silicon wafer	University Wafer, MA, USA	[100] orientation, 4-inch diameter	Small pieces (2 mm × 2 mm) were cut from 100 mm diameter wafer
Spin Coater	SPS-Europe B.V., The Netherlands	SPIN 150
Spinning Disk microscope	Perkin Elmer ultra-view VOX system	CSU-X1-A3 N	The system was equipped with four (405/488/561/640 nm) lasers and controlled with the Volocity software package.
SU8 developer	Microchem, MA, USA	SU8 Developer
Trichloro (1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorooctyl) silane	Sigma-Aldrich, Bangalore, India	448931	Trichloro (1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorooctyl) silane vapor is toxic
UV lamp	Oriel Instruments, Bangalore, India		200 Watt and collimated UV light source
Volocity software	Perkin-Elmer		Image analysis