Collaborators at the University of Basel, Switzerland and Max Planck Institute, Germany have developed a microfluidic lab-on-a-chip for monitoring gene regulation of individual bacterial cells. The device lets scientists control a number of environmental variables of thousands of cells at the same time while closely watching what happens to every one of the cells.
As each cell moves through one of two thousand channels, each of which can have a unique environment that it’s living in. Cameras take pictures of each cells regularly and the imaging data is processed by a piece of software called Mother Machine Analyzer. The software identifies and tracks each cell, identifying changes that they undergo in response to different environmental conditions.
Here you can see how E coli‘s genes respond as its environment switches from being rich in glucose to lactose:
Study in Nature Communications: Monitoring single-cell gene regulation under dynamically controllable conditions with integrated microfluidics and software…
Via: University of Basel…