A Semi-automated Culture And Analysis System For Toxicology Studies Of C. Elegans

As a common in vivo model organism,Caeneohabditis elegans(C.elegans)is widely used in drug screening and toxicology research.There are many limitations of C.elegans toxicology experiments in traditional microplates.First,the microplate experiments cost lots of reagent,while many test compounds such as traditional Chinese medicine ingredient are difficult to extract or obtained in large quantities.Second,the manual operation steps such as periodic liquid change in the toxicology cost a lot of time.Third,the imaging analysis of C.elegans is time-consuming and laborious.Recently,microfluidics has developed rapidly.In order to use nematodes to study the chronic toxicity of drugs,we have developed a microfluidic system for long-term culture and analysis of C.elegans.This system includes a bridge-like microfluidic chip to limit nematodes to the chamber for long-term culture and observation without affect their free movement.The platform’s PID temperature control system and semi-automatic pressure injection system are used to provide a stable toxicology experimental environment for C.elegans,and an optical imaging system is used to capture C.elegans video to obtain physiological indicators such as body length and bend frequency that reflect C.elegans growth and development toxicity and neurotoxicity.The system is deployed on a Raspberry Pi which is low-cost and low-power.We use Flask framework to build a web platform that can implement remote monitoring and control of experiments.We conducted a 17-day long-term culture on microfluidic syste,and examined the feasibility of the system for toxicology studies using monocrotophos as a tool drug.After testing,the momocrotophos toxic dose to C.elegans in the microfluidic system was tested.The reaction relationship is obvious.The advantages of this system are the low consumption of reagents,the semi-automated manipulation and automated image analysis of C.elegans toxicology experiments can be realized through the information transmission of the web platform.The microfluidic system are low-cost,low-power and has good application prospects in the field of high throughput toxicity screening of a large number of pharmaceutical ingredients and complex environmental chemicals.