Automated lifetime analysis of a single yeast cell

Yeast pedigree analysis requires a biologist to manually manipulate single yeast cells every 90 minutes for as long as 150 hours. Automating this analysis allows the rapid completion of experiments that would have previously taken a biologist's lifetime. In this paper, progress toward automating yeast pedigree analysis is presented. Also presented are two novel and useful tools for biotechnology: a procedure to pattern a ferromagnetic alloy on PDMS, and a method of magnetically capturing a single cell in a microfluidic channel.