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Micromachines
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Organisms-on-Chips
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Organisms-on-Chips

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "E：Engineering and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 12406

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Pouya Rezai

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
Interests: microfluidics; multiphase flow; organism-on-a-chip; biosensor; point-of-care diagnostics; point-of-need detection; cell and particle separation; sample preparation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Wenhui Wang

E-Mail Website
Co-Guest Editor
Department of Precision Instrument, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Interests: analytical instruments; microfluidics; lab on a chip; micromanipulation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Small organisms such as Caenorhabditis elegans (worm), Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly), and Danio rerio (zebrafish) are excellent models for disease investigation and drug discovery. They offer many advantages including genetic homology to humans, biological simplicity, transparency, and amenability to genetic manipulation which are important assets for neurobehavioral studies in a whole biological system. Conventional manual or equipment-intensive methods for organism assays are slow and mostly qualitative. In the past two decades, many microsystems have been developed for worm, fruit fly and zebrafish studies and facilitated automation, control and high-throughput quantitative analysis on these models. Many microfluidic devices have been developed for studying the organisms’ neuronal and behavioral responses to various environmental cues such as chemicals, electrical signals, mechanical forces and light, to name a few. It is anticipated that these microfluidic devices will play a major role in facilitating fundamental disease investigations and high throughput drug discovery assays involving small-scale model organisms. Accordingly, this special issue seeks to provide the most recent advances made by the lead researchers in the area of Organism-on-a-Chip, via publication of original research papers, communications and review articles that focus on novel and recent microfluidic and miniaturized devices for the above organisms and other small models.

Prof. Dr. Pouya Rezai
Prof. Dr. Wenhui Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Micromachines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Microfluidic
  • Lab on a Chip
  • Organism on a chip
  • C. elegans, D. melanogaster, D. rerio
  • Worm, Fly, Zebrafish
  • Disease
  • Toxicology
  • In-vivo screening
  • Drug discovery
  • Chemical screening
  • Behavioural screening
  • Neuronal screening
  • Cellular and subcellular screening
  • Phenotypic screening

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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23 pages, 3558 KiB  
Article
An In Vivo Microfluidic Study of Bacterial Load Dynamics and Absorption in the C. elegans Intestine
by Vittorio Viri, Maël Arveiler, Thomas Lehnert and Martin A. M. Gijs
Micromachines 2021, 12(7), 832; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12070832 - 17 Jul 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4129
Abstract
Caenorhabditiselegans (C. elegans) has gained importance as a model for studying host-microbiota interactions and bacterial infections related to human pathogens. Assessing the fate of ingested bacteria in the worm’s intestine is therefore of great interest, in particular with respect to [...] Read more.
Caenorhabditiselegans (C. elegans) has gained importance as a model for studying host-microbiota interactions and bacterial infections related to human pathogens. Assessing the fate of ingested bacteria in the worm’s intestine is therefore of great interest, in particular with respect to normal bacterial digestion or intestinal colonization by pathogens. Here, we report an in vivo study of bacteria in the gut of C. elegans. We take advantage of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic device enabling passive immobilization of adult worms under physiological conditions. Non-pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria expressing either pH-sensitive or pH-insensitive fluorescence reporters as well as fluorescently marked indigestible microbeads were used for the different assays. Dynamic fluorescence patterns of the bacterial load in the worm gut were conveniently monitored by time-lapse imaging. Cyclic motion of the bacterial load due to peristaltic activity of the gut was observed and biochemical digestion of E. coli was characterized by high-resolution fluorescence imaging of the worm’s intestine. We could discriminate between individual intact bacteria and diffuse signals related to disrupted bacteria that can be digested. From the decay of the diffuse fluorescent signal, we determined a digestion time constant of 14 ± 4 s. In order to evaluate the possibility to perform infection assays with our platform, immobilized C. elegans worms were fed pathogenic Mycobacterium marinum (M. marinum) bacteria. We analyzed bacterial fate and accumulation in the gut of N2 worms and mitochondrial stress response in a hsp-6::gfp mutant. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Organisms-on-Chips)
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12 pages, 1376 KiB  
Article
Parallel-Channel Electrotaxis and Neuron Screening of Caenorhabditis elegans
by Khaled Youssef, Daphne Archonta, Terrance Kubiseski, Anurag Tandon and Pouya Rezai
Micromachines 2020, 11(8), 756; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi11080756 - 04 Aug 2020
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3260
Abstract
In this paper, we report a novel microfluidic method to conduct a Caenorhabditis elegans electrotaxis movement assay and neuronal imaging on up to 16 worms in parallel. C. elegans is a model organism for neurodegenerative disease and movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease [...] Read more.
In this paper, we report a novel microfluidic method to conduct a Caenorhabditis elegans electrotaxis movement assay and neuronal imaging on up to 16 worms in parallel. C. elegans is a model organism for neurodegenerative disease and movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), and for screening chemicals that alleviate protein aggregation, neuronal death, and movement impairment in PD. Electrotaxis of C. elegans in microfluidic channels has led to the development of neurobehavioral screening platforms, but enhancing the throughput of the electrotactic behavioral assay has remained a challenge. Our device consisted of a hierarchy of tree-like channels for worm loading into 16 parallel electrotaxis screening channels with equivalent electric fields. Tapered channels at the ends of electrotaxis channels were used for worm immobilization and fluorescent imaging of neurons. Parallel electrotaxis of worms was first validated against established single-worm electrotaxis phenotypes. Then, mutant screening was demonstrated using the NL5901 strain, carrying human α-synuclein in the muscle cells, by showing the associated electrotaxis defects in the average speed, body bend frequency (BBF), and electrotaxis time index (ETI). Moreover, chemical screening of a PD worm model was shown by exposing the BZ555 strain, expressing green fluorescence protein (GFP) in the dopaminergic neurons (DNs), to 6-hydroxydopamine neurotoxin. The neurotoxin-treated worms exhibited a reduction in electrotaxis swimming speed, BBF, ETI, and DNs fluorescence intensity. We envision our technique to be used widely in C. elegans-based movement disorder assays to accelerate behavioral and cellular phenotypic investigations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Organisms-on-Chips)
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Review

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17 pages, 2742 KiB  
Review
Platforms for High-Throughput Screening and Force Measurements on Fungi and Oomycetes
by Yiling Sun, Ayelen Tayagui, Sarah Sale, Debolina Sarkar, Volker Nock and Ashley Garrill
Micromachines 2021, 12(6), 639; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12060639 - 30 May 2021
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3725
Abstract
Pathogenic fungi and oomycetes give rise to a significant number of animal and plant diseases. While the spread of these pathogenic microorganisms is increasing globally, emerging resistance to antifungal drugs is making associated diseases more difficult to treat. High-throughput screening (HTS) and new [...] Read more.
Pathogenic fungi and oomycetes give rise to a significant number of animal and plant diseases. While the spread of these pathogenic microorganisms is increasing globally, emerging resistance to antifungal drugs is making associated diseases more difficult to treat. High-throughput screening (HTS) and new developments in lab-on-a-chip (LOC) platforms promise to aid the discovery of urgently required new control strategies and anti-fungal/oomycete drugs. In this review, we summarize existing HTS and emergent LOC approaches in the context of infection strategies and invasive growth exhibited by these microorganisms. To aid this, we introduce key biological aspects and review existing HTS platforms based on both conventional and LOC techniques. We then provide an in-depth discussion of more specialized LOC platforms for force measurements on hyphae and to study electro- and chemotaxis in spores, approaches which have the potential to aid the discovery of alternative drug targets on future HTS platforms. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of the technical developments required to improve the uptake of these platforms into the general laboratory environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Organisms-on-Chips)
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