A setup, consisting of an optical tweezers system and microfluidic devices coupled with fluorescence imaging was designed to perform a time dependent observation during artificially induced glycolytic oscillations. Multi-channel flow devices and diffusion chambers were fabricated using soft lithography. Automatized pumps controlled specific flow rates of infused glucose and cyanide solutions, used to induce the oscillations. Flow and diffusion in the microfluidic devices were simulated to assure experimentally the desired coverage of the solutions across the yeast cells, a requirement for time dependent measurements. Using near infrared optical tweezers, yeast cells were trapped and positioned in array configurations, ranging from a single cell to clusters of various symmetries, in order to obtain information about cell-cell communications during the metabolic cycles. |
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