A microfluidic platform for real-time and in situ monitoring of virus infection process.
Microfluidic chip is a promising platform for studying virus behaviors at the cell level. However, only a few chip-based studies on virus infection have been reported. Here, a three-layer microfluidic chip with low shear stress was designed to monitor the infection process of a recombinant Pseudorabies virus (GFP-PrV) in real time and in situ, which could express green fluorescent protein during the genome replication. The infection and proliferation characteristics of GFP-PrV were measured by monitoring the fluorescence intensity of GFP and determining the one-step growth curve. It was found that the infection behaviors of GFP-PrV in the host cells could hardly be influenced by the microenvironment in the microfluidic chip. Furthermore, the results of drug inhibition assays on the microfluidic chip with a tree-like concentration gradient generator showed that one of the infection pathways of GFP-PrV in the host cells was microtubule-dependent. This work established a promising microfluidic platform for the research on virus infection.
Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Biology and Medicine (Ministry of Education), College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan Institute of Biotechnology, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, People's Republic of China ; State Key Laboratory of Virology, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
Na
N
Xu
Zhen-Feng
ZF
Zhang
Li
L
Wang
Bo
B
Gao
Dai-Wen
DW
Pang
Han-Zhong
HZ
Wang
Zhi-Ling
ZL
Zhang