Cornaglia Matteo, Mouchiroud Laurent, Marette Alexis, Narasimhan Shreya, Lehnert Thomas, Jovaisaite Virginija, Auwerx Johan, Gijs Martin A M
Laboratory of Microsystems, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Laboratory for Integrative and Systems Physiology, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2015 May 7;5:10192. doi: 10.1038/srep10192.
Studies of the real-time dynamics of embryonic development require a gentle embryo handling method, the possibility of long-term live imaging during the complete embryogenesis, as well as of parallelization providing a population's statistics, while keeping single embryo resolution. We describe an automated approach that fully accomplishes these requirements for embryos of Caenorhabditis elegans, one of the most employed model organisms in biomedical research. We developed a microfluidic platform which makes use of pure passive hydrodynamics to run on-chip worm cultures, from which we obtain synchronized embryo populations, and to immobilize these embryos in incubator microarrays for long-term high-resolution optical imaging. We successfully employ our platform to investigate morphogenesis and mitochondrial biogenesis during the full embryonic development and elucidate the role of the mitochondrial unfolded protein response (UPR(mt)) within C. elegans embryogenesis. Our method can be generally used for protein expression and developmental studies at the embryonic level, but can also provide clues to understand the aging process and age-related diseases in particular.
对胚胎发育实时动态的研究需要一种轻柔的胚胎处理方法，需要在整个胚胎发生过程中进行长期实时成像的可能性，以及在保持单个胚胎分辨率的同时提供群体统计数据的并行化方法。我们描述了一种自动化方法，该方法完全满足了秀丽隐杆线虫胚胎的这些要求，秀丽隐杆线虫是生物医学研究中使用最广泛的模式生物之一。我们开发了一个微流体平台，该平台利用纯被动流体动力学在芯片上培养线虫，从中获得同步的胚胎群体，并将这些胚胎固定在培养箱微阵列中进行长期高分辨率光学成像。我们成功地利用我们的平台研究了整个胚胎发育过程中的形态发生和线粒体生物发生，并阐明了线粒体未折叠蛋白反应（UPR(mt)）在秀丽隐杆线虫胚胎发生中的作用。我们的方法通常可用于胚胎水平的蛋白质表达和发育研究，但也可以为理解衰老过程，特别是与年龄相关的疾病提供线索。
