Design and Modeling of a Microfluidic Coral Polyps Culture Chip with Concentration and Temperature Gradients

Abstract

Traditional methods of cultivating polyps are costly and time-consuming. Microfluidic chip technology makes it possible to study coral polyps at the single-cell level, but most chips can only be analyzed for a single environmental variable. In this work, we addressed these issues by designing a microfluidic coral polyp culture chip with a multi-physical field for multivariable analyses and verifying the feasibility of the chip through numerical simulation. This chip used multiple serpentine structures to generate the concentration gradient and used a circuit to form the Joule effect for the temperature gradient. It could generate different temperature gradients at different voltages for studying the growth of polyps in different solutes or at different temperatures. The simulation of flow field and temperature showed that the solute and heat could be transferred evenly and efficiently in the chambers, and that the temperature of the chamber remained unchanged after 24 h of continuous heating. The thermal expansion of the microfluidic chip was low at the optimal culture temperature of coral polyps, which proves the feasibility of the use of the multivariable microfluidic model for polyp culture and provides a theoretical basis for the actual chip processing.

Nanotechnology for coral reef conservation, restoration and rehabilitation

“…Biohybrid nanoengineered materials (biochemistry, geochemistry, architecture, assembly, coating) designed to release biochemical cues could radically improve recruitment success and coral growth. Recent advances in coral cell culture methods 18,19 , new coral-based applications of microfluidics 20 and 3D biofabrication are paving the way towards biohybrid coral models and high throughput systems 22,22. Nanotechnology should be integrated with such systems to improve our understanding of molecular trafficking between holobiont partners in relation to environmental change. The successful fusion of nanotechnology and coral science holds the potential for cutting-edge transformative research across the different scales of the coral holobiont.…”