4.6 Article

A Bubble-Free Microfluidic Device for Easy-to-Operate Immobilization, Culturing and Monitoring of Zebrafish Embryos

Journal

MICROMACHINES
Volume 10, Issue 3, Pages -

Publisher

MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/mi10030168

Keywords

microfluidics; 3D printing; zebrafish embryo; embryogenesis

Funding

  1. National Natural Science Foundation of China [61774036, 31771299]
  2. National Key Basic Research Program of China [2015CB352100]
  3. Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
  4. National Center for International Research [2017B01012]

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The development of miniaturized devices for studying zebrafish embryos has been limited due to complicated fabrication and operation processes. Here, we reported on a microfluidic device that enabled the capture and culture of zebrafish embryos and real-time monitoring of dynamic embryonic development. The device was simply fabricated by bonding two layers of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) structures replicated from three-dimensional (3D) printed reusable molds onto a flat glass substrate. Embryos were easily loaded into the device with a pipette, docked in traps by gravity, and then retained in traps with hydrodynamic forces for long-term culturing. A degassing chamber bonded on top was used to remove air bubbles from the embryo-culturing channel and traps so that any embryo movement caused by air bubbles was eliminated during live imaging. Computational fluid dynamics simulations suggested this embryo-trapping and -retention regime to exert low shear stress on the immobilized embryos. Monitoring of the zebrafish embryogenesis over 20 h during the early stages successfully verified the performance of the microfluidic device for culturing the immobilized zebrafish embryos. Therefore, this rapid-prototyping, low-cost and easy-to-operate microfluidic device offers a promising platform for the long-term culturing of immobilized zebrafish embryos under continuous medium perfusion and the high-quality screening of the developmental dynamics.

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