title: An integrated microfluidic device in marine microalgae culture for toxicity screening application.
abstract: Algal assay using marine microalgae has emerged as an important method to evaluate the toxicity of chemicals, which is currently undertaken using conventional culture and additional detection of physiological cellular endpoints. While effective, this approach can be labor-intensive and thus could benefit from a more streamlined, integrated approach. Microfluidics offers a way to accomplish this goal. Here, we demonstrate a microfluidic device which consists of a concentration gradient generator (CGG), diffusible culturing module and power-free valve system. It allows the processes of chemical liquid dilution and diffusion, micro-scale microalgal culture (in batch or chemostatic conditions), cell stimulation and on-lined screening to be integrated into a single device. Using the device, marine microalgae were successfully cultured and stressed on-chip. The simple assay provides multi-biological response measurements of cell division rate, autofluorescence and esterase activity. This work showed promising in developing a microfluidic platform for toxicity screening based on marine microalgal culture.
authors.affiliation: Microfluidic Research Institute, Dalian University, Dalian, China. guoxiazheng@gmail.com
authors.forename: Guoxia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Yunhua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zumin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Weiliang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.forename: Hu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Yajie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D018929:Cell Culture Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D008387:Marine Toxins / Q000032:analysis* / Q000737:chemistry; D058086:Microalgae / Q000254:growth & development*; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D018675:Toxicity Tests / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D008387:Marine Toxins