A microfluidic 16×6-cell-trap array for comparative cell culturing

This work presents a microfluidic chip with a 96-cell-trap array (16-row × 6-column) for immobilization and comparative culturing of single yeast cells. In this microfluidic system, budding yeast (S. cerevisiae) cells can be delivered to each column of the cell-trap array by means of a laminar focused flow and be reliably captured at the traps in each column through hydrodynamic forces. Immobilized cells can then be comparatively cultured while being exposed to different media. The developed system allows for performing experiments and control experiments in parallel or for executing comparative experiments with on-site monitoring of the dynamic cellular development in the microfluidic 96-cell-trap array.