title: Stress response of Caenorhabditis elegans induced by space crowding in a micro-column array chip.
abstract: Crowding stress has been reported to play an important role in affecting physiological behaviour. To study this process, a reliable analytical method under confined space is essential. In this work, we demonstrated a microfluidic approach for investigating physiological responses of C. elegans to confined spaces. The PDMS microfluidic chip consisting of arrays of micro-columns enabled us to mimic different crowding conditions by changing the intervals among micro-columns. C. elegans were transferred into this micro-column array and the subcellular distribution of DAF-16, which is a well-known transcription factor regulating different stress responses, was monitored for analysing the physiological responses to the confined spaces. We found that the worms exhibited a gradual increase in DAF-16 nuclear localization in the micro-column array with intervals from 200 μm to 40 μm. Moreover, the results showed that the absence of food and crowding stress could cooperate to promote increased DAF-16 nuclear localization. Finally, loss-of-function mutations in mec-4 and mec-10, which are amiloride-sensitive Na(+) channel genes expressed in all six gentle touch neurons, accelerated the velocity of DAF-16 nuclear localization, induced by confined space, revealing that mec-4/mec-10 were not required for this stress response. Thus, this device will provide a versatile, reliable and controllable platform for crowding stress studies.
authors: Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics at Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics-Hubei Bioinformatics & Molecular Imaging Key Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors: Xixian
authors: X
authors: Wang
authors: Lichun
authors: L
authors: Tang
authors: Yuyang
authors: Y
authors: Xia
authors: Liang
authors: L
authors: Hu
authors: Xiaojun
authors: X
authors: Feng
authors: Wei
authors: W
authors: Du
authors: Bi-Feng
authors: BF
authors: Liu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000502:physiology*; D002449:Cell Aggregation / Q000502:physiology; D002452:Cell Count / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003441:Crowding; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013312:Stress, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D046888:Tissue Array Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation*