Mechanical characterization system of cyanobacteria using a robot integrated microdluidic chip

Abstract

Cyanobacteria have ion channels which response to osmolarity change in living environment. Since it may lead to the mechanical characteristics changes of the cell itself due to the intracellular pressure changes, we focus on constructing the mechanical characteristics measurement system of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, one of unicellular cyanobacteria. There are two important issues in constructing the system. Because of features of the cyanobacteria, which is a kind of floating cell whose diameter is a few micrometer, one is how to transport the cell to the measurement point. The other is how to deform the target cell. In this paper, we propose the system combining optical tweezers for transportation of the target cell with the robot integrated microfluidic chip (robochip). The robochip contains an on-chip probe actuated by an external actuator, and a force sensor. We present the concept of the total system, and demonstrated the results of mechanical characterization of a single cyanobacteria.