SU-8 force sensing pillar arrays for biological measurements

Doll, Joseph C.; Harjee, Nahid; Klejwa, N.; Kwon, Ronald Y.; Coulthard, Sarah M.; Petzold, Bryan C.; Goodman, Miriam B.; Pruitt, Beth L.

doi:10.1039/b818622g

Cited by 71 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…5a. This result is consistent with the forces reported by Doll et al 22 who measured in a similar manner. The experiment demonstrated above thus shows that our device can be used to measure forces on other substrates, and worm locomotion behaviour in various environments can be investigated further.…”

Section: Elegans Locomotion Forces On Other Substratessupporting

confidence: 93%

On-chip analysis of C. elegans muscular forces and locomotion patterns in microstructured environments

et al. 2013

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Section: Elegans Locomotion Forces On Other Substratessupporting

confidence: 93%

On-chip analysis of C. elegans muscular forces and locomotion patterns in microstructured environments

et al. 2013

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“…8͒. In addition, the magnitudes of our measured forces are supported by recent experimental measurements of force delivered by crawling C. elegans using force-sensing micropillars, 50 with ͗F prop ͘ϳ2 nN.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 66%

Propulsive force measurements and flow behavior of undulatory swimmers at low Reynolds number

et al. 2010

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The swimming behavior of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is investigated in aqueous solutions of increasing viscosity. Detailed flow dynamics associated with the nematode's swimming motion as well as propulsive force and power are obtained using particle tracking and velocimetry methods. We find that C. elegans delivers propulsive thrusts on the order of a few nanonewtons. Such findings are supported by values obtained using resistive force theory; the ratio of normal to tangential drag coefficients is estimated to be approximately 1.4. Over the range of solutions investigated here, the flow properties remain largely independent of viscosity. Velocity magnitudes of the flow away from the nematode body decay rapidly within less than a body length and collapse onto a single master curve. Overall, our findings support that C. elegans is an attractive living model to study the coupling between small-scale propulsion and low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The swimming behavior of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is investigated in aqueous solutions of increasing viscosity. Detailed flow dynamics associated with the nematode's swimming motion as well as propulsive force and power are obtained using particle tracking and velocimetry methods. We find that C. elegans delivers propulsive thrusts on the order of a few nanonewtons. Such findings are supported by values obtained using resistive force theory; the ratio of normal to tangential drag coefficients is estimated to be approximately 1.4. Over the range of solutions investigated here, the flow properties remain largely independent of viscosity. Velocity magnitudes of the flow away from the nematode body decay rapidly within less than a body length and collapse onto a single master curve. Overall, our findings support that C. elegans is an attractive living model to study the coupling between small-scale propulsion and low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. Disciplines Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

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“…We believe these are the real signal variations. Actually, in the work of Doll et al, 32 higher-degree variations were observed in their experiment where the force sensing frequency was much higher than 14 Hz, which was used in our experiment. This indicates that a higher sensing frequency is able to reveal more detailed or fluctuating force information, a common sense in the field of signal processing.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…29 Furthermore, when made of materials, such as PDMS or SU-8, the pillars were capable of measuring subtle micro-Newton-scale mechanosensation forces between the worm body muscles and the pillars. [32][33][34] Enabled by the force measurement techniques, the locomotion patterns could be precisely described quantitatively and correlated to environmental variables, which are favored by biologists. Meanwhile, it is still desirable to advance this further by incorporating means of manipulating neurons and thus provide a platform that allows mapping of external stimuli, internal neuron circuits, and locomotion patterns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This rather simple environment, though easy to implement, is insufficient to mimic the soil which is the natural habitat for C. elegans. 30 In an attempt to provide a more soil-like environment, the concept of artificial soil [30][31][32] was proposed, and "soil" of different forms was fabricated. Basically, the soil is composed of a large matrix of micro-pillars, in which the dimension and distance of pillars are varied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An integrated platform enabling optogenetic illumination of Caenorhabditis elegans neurons and muscular force measurement in microstructured environments

Qiu

Huang

et al. 2015

Biomicrofluidics

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Optogenetics has been recently applied to manipulate the neural circuits of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) to investigate its mechanosensation and locomotive behavior, which is a fundamental topic in model biology. In most neuron-related research, free C. elegans moves on an open area such as agar surface. However, this simple environment is different from the soil, in which C. elegans naturally dwells. To bridge up the gap, this paper presents integration of optogenetic illumination of C. elegans neural circuits and muscular force measurement in a structured microfluidic chip mimicking the C. elegans soil habitat. The microfluidic chip is essentially a ∼1 × 1 cm2 elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane micro-pillar array, configured in either form of lattice (LC) or honeycomb (HC) to mimic the environment in which the worm dwells. The integrated system has four key modules for illumination pattern generation, pattern projection, automatic tracking of the worm, and force measurement. Specifically, two optical pathways co-exist in an inverted microscope, including built-in bright-field illumination for worm tracking and pattern generation, and added-in optogenetic illumination for pattern projection onto the worm body segment. The behavior of a freely moving worm in the chip under optogenetic manipulation can be recorded for off-line force measurements. Using wild-type N2 C. elegans, we demonstrated optical illumination of C. elegans neurons by projecting light onto its head/tail segment at 14 Hz refresh frequency. We also measured the force and observed three representative locomotion patterns of forward movement, reversal, and omega turn for LC and HC configurations. Being capable of stimulating or inhibiting worm neurons and simultaneously measuring the thrust force, this enabling platform would offer new insights into the correlation between neurons and locomotive behaviors of the nematode under a complex environment.

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SU-8 force sensing pillar arrays for biological measurements

Cited by 71 publications

References 20 publications

On-chip analysis of C. elegans muscular forces and locomotion patterns in microstructured environments

On-chip analysis of C. elegans muscular forces and locomotion patterns in microstructured environments

Propulsive force measurements and flow behavior of undulatory swimmers at low Reynolds number

An integrated platform enabling optogenetic illumination of Caenorhabditis elegans neurons and muscular force measurement in microstructured environments

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