Electrical sorting of caenorhabditis elegans

Researchers working on Caenorhabditis elegans (worm) animal model routinely need to obtain large populations of synchronized animals for various genetic, genomic and biochemical experiments. Current methods of sorting and synchronization are time consuming (due to staging embryos and larvae for a desired period of time), expensive (if carried out by means of a robotic equipment), and gene expression-based (such as green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter). In this paper, we report a novel method that involves the use of electric field as a stimulus inside a microfluidic device to sort C. elegans according to their age (size) in a continuous manner. This is based on our recent discovery that electric field stimulus in a microchannel causes worms to orient towards cathode and move in a characteristic manner (termed electrotaxis). Copyright © (2011) by the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society.