The long-term objective is to develop and use powerful microfluidic and automation tools to understand genetic pathways that regulate the biochemical communications between neurons and other tissues in C. elegans. Microfluidics is ideal for studies of small organisms such as C. elegans because of the relevant length scales and the possibility of integration and automation. The research objective of the CAREER project is to engineer a microfluidic system for live imaging of dynamic processes in vivo, to accomplish automated image processing, and to identify roles of genes in neuronal biochemical communications.This system will significantly increase the throughput and accuracy of in vivo live imaging experiments in model organisms. It streamlines and automates the painstakingly manual procedure of microscopy, in some cases enables some experiments that are otherwise impossible to do, and reduces the noise and artifacts in these experiments. The image analysis algorithms will provide quantitative data with large throughput to allow good statistics. The approach is innovative because the technologies developed here dramatically increase the capabilities and throughput of current assay tools, enabling key biological experiments that are not currently performed. Furthermore, the technology is broadly applicable to other biological systems and could potentially lead to new therapeutics for related diseases.
