A major limitation to yeast aging study has been the inability to track mother cells and observe molecular markers during the aging process. The traditional lifespan assay relies on manual micro-manipulation to remove daughter cells from the mother, which is laborious, time consuming, and does not allow long term tracking with high resolution microscopy. Recently, we have developed a microfluidic system capable of retaining mother cells in the microfluidic chambers while removing daughter cells automatically, making it possible to observe fluorescent reporters in single cells throughout their lifespan. Here we report the development of a new generation of microfluidic device that overcomes several limitations of the previous system, making it easier to fabricate and operate, and allowing functions not possible with the previous design. The basic unit of the device consists of microfluidic channels with pensile columns that can physically trap the mother cells while allowing the removal of daughter cells automatically by the flow of the fresh media. The whole microfluidic device contains multiple independent units operating in parallel, allowing simultaneous analysis of multiple strains. Using this system, we have reproduced the lifespan curves for the known long and short-lived mutants, demonstrating the power of the device for automated lifespan measurement. Following fluorescent reporters in single mother cells throughout their lifespan, we discovered a surprising change of expression of the translation elongation factor TEF2 during aging, suggesting altered translational control in aged mother cells. Utilizing the capability of the new device to trap mother-daughter pairs, we analyzed mother-daughter inheritance and found age dependent asymmetric partitioning of a general stress response reporter between mother and daughter cells.

SummaryBudding yeast has served as an important model organism for aging research, and previous genetic studies have led to the discovery of conserved genes/pathways that regulate lifespan across species. However, the molecular causes of aging and death remain elusive, because it is very difficult to directly observe the cellular and molecular events accompanying aging in single yeast cells by the traditional approach based on micromanipulation. We have developed a microfluidic system to track individual mother cells throughout their lifespan, allowing automated lifespan measurement and direct observation of cell cycle dynamics, cell/organelle morphologies, and various molecular markers. We found that aging of the wild‐type cells is characterized by an increased general stress and a progressive lengthening of the cell cycle for the last few cell divisions; these features are much less apparent in the long‐lived FOB1 deletion mutant. Following the fate of individual cells revealed that there are different forms of cell death that are characterized by different terminal cell morphologies, and associated with different levels of stress and lifespan. We have identified a molecular marker – the level of the expression of Hsp104, as a good predictor for the lifespan of individual cells. Our approach allows detailed molecular phenotyping of single cells in the process of aging and thus provides new insight into its mechanism.