Luo Yongsheng, Zhao Jinglun, He Chunpeng, Lu Zuhong, Lu Xiaolin
State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, School of Biological Science & Medical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.
School of Public Health, Nantong University, Nantong 226019, China.
Micromachines (Basel). 2020 Jan 23;11(2):127. doi: 10.3390/mi11020127.
Methodologies for coral polyps culture and real-time monitoring are important in investigating the effects of the global environmental changes on coral reefs and marine biology. However, the traditional cultivation method is limited in its ability to provide a rapid and dynamic microenvironment to effectively exchange the chemical substances and simulate the natural environment change. Here, an integrated microdevice with continuous perfusion and temperature-control in the microenvironment was fabricated for dynamic individual coral polyps culture. For a realistic mimicry of the marine ecological environment, we constructed the micro-well based microfluidics platform that created a fluid flow environment with a low shear rate and high substance transfer, and developed a sensitive temperature control system for the long-term culture of individual coral polyps. This miniaturized platform was applied to study the individual coral polyps in response to the temperature change for evaluating the coral death caused by El Nino. The experimental results demonstrated that the microfluidics platform could provide the necessary growth environment for coral polyps as expected so that in turn the biological activity of individual coral polyps can quickly be recovered. The separation between the algae and host polyp cells were observed in the high culture temperature range and the coral polyp metabolism was negatively affected. We believe that our culture platform for individual coral polyps can provide a reliable analytical approach for model and mechanism investigations of coral bleaching and reef conservation.
珊瑚虫培养和实时监测方法对于研究全球环境变化对珊瑚礁和海洋生物学的影响至关重要。然而，传统的培养方法在提供快速动态微环境以有效交换化学物质和模拟自然环境变化方面能力有限。在此，制造了一种在微环境中具有连续灌注和温度控制功能的集成微器件，用于动态培养单个珊瑚虫。为了逼真地模拟海洋生态环境，我们构建了基于微孔的微流控平台，该平台创造了具有低剪切速率和高物质传输的流体流动环境，并开发了一种用于单个珊瑚虫长期培养的灵敏温度控制系统。这个小型化平台被用于研究单个珊瑚虫对温度变化的响应，以评估厄尔尼诺现象导致的珊瑚死亡情况。实验结果表明，微流控平台能够如预期那样为珊瑚虫提供必要的生长环境，从而使单个珊瑚虫的生物活性能够迅速恢复。在较高培养温度范围内观察到藻类与宿主珊瑚虫细胞分离，并且珊瑚虫的新陈代谢受到负面影响。我们相信，我们的单个珊瑚虫培养平台能够为珊瑚白化和珊瑚礁保护的模型及机制研究提供可靠的分析方法。
