Diffusion-based Chemotaxis Chamber
Hi all,
For quite some times we have been trying to design a diffusion-based chemotaxis chamber that operates under an environment of 37 degrees Celsius in temperature.
One main obstacle that we face is the evaporation of the 2 uL of rhodamine 6 G (R6G) that we load on the well openning of the membrane during diffusion studies.
To combat evaporation, we have created a closed diffusion-based chemotaxis chamber using PDMS, with the schematics posted below:
This system is pretty cool in that no adhesive are used. The PDMS is bonded to the pnc-Si chip with UV ozone treatment only, and the capillary tubings are inserted into the chamber through the grooves made in the PDMS. The whole chamber can be submerged into 37 degree Celcius buffer without any leakage.
Variation of this chamber can be used in the study of cell-cell interaction (investigated by Deborah Fowell’s group) and Anant’s mini cell culture system (with insulin producing hybridoma cells), as well as the charactertization of the transport of molecules across the pnc-Si membrane.
Following is a movie of R6G diffusion from the loading well to the observation well (please refer to the top view of the schematics above): diff-chemotax-chamb-observe-well