Microfluidic platform for studies of self-organizing processes in a bacterial cell

摘要

Lab-on-a-chip platform presents many new opportunities to study bacterial cells and cellular assemblies. Here we describe fabrication and characterize two promising platforms that enable the study of cellular organization in Escherichia coli bacteria. One of the platforms allows for rapid delivery of chemical agents, and the other, mechanical perturbations to E. coli cells while observing sub-cellular structures in a high resolution optical microscope in real time. The first platform follows the so called mother machine design where bacteria grow in dead-end pockets. While enabling the observation of bacteria by a much larger number of doublings than by conventional means we find that the cells in the pockets experience small but significant growth limitation. The second platform makes use of micron-sized pressure actuated valves to apply uniaxial stress to bacterial cells. By placing bacterium under a miniature valve and closing the valve by externally applied pressure deforms the cell. We show at the proof-of-principle level that this approach can be used to study mechanical properties of bacterial cells and their internal organization.