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Microfluidics-enabled phenotyping of a whole population of C. elegans worms over their embryonic and post-embryonic development at single-organism resolution.
- Source :
-
Microsystems & nanoengineering [Microsyst Nanoeng] 2018 May 07; Vol. 4, pp. 6. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 May 07 (Print Publication: 2018). - Publication Year :
- 2018
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Abstract
- The organism Caenorhabditis elegans is a performant model system for studying human biological processes and diseases, but until now all phenome data are produced as population-averaged read-outs. Monitoring of individual responses to drug treatments would however be more informative. Here, a new strategy to track different phenotypic traits of individual C. elegans nematodes throughout their full life-cycle-i.e., embryonic and post-embryonic development, until adulthood onset, differently from life-span-is presented. In an automated fashion, single worms were synchronized, isolated, and cultured from egg to adulthood in a microfluidic device, where their identity was preserved during their whole development. Several phenotypes were monitored and quantified for each animal, resulting in high-content phenome data. Specifically, the method was validated by analyzing the response of C. elegans to doxycycline, an antibiotic fairly well-known to prolong the development and activate mitochondrial stress-response pathways in different species. Interestingly, the obtained extensive single-worm phenome not only confirmed the dramatic doxycycline effect on the worm developmental delay, but more importantly revealed subtle yet severe treatment-dependent phenotypes that are representative of minority subgroups and would have otherwise stayed hidden in an averaged dataset. Such heterogeneous response started during the embryonic development, which makes essential having a dedicated chip that allows including this early developmental stage in the drug assay. Our approach would therefore allow elucidating pharmaceutical or therapeutic responses that so far were still being overlooked.<br />Competing Interests: M. A. M. G. and M. C. have an International Patent Application n° PCT/WO 2016/063199 A1, filed on 20th October 2014 as provisional application n° PCT/IB214/065472, for a device that is related to this work. The remaining authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 2055-7434
- Volume :
- 4
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Microsystems & nanoengineering
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 31057896
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-018-0003-8