Behavior of Caenorhabditis elegans in alternating electric field and its application to their localization and control

Caenorhabditis elegans is an attractive model organism because of its genetic similarity to humans and the ease of its manipulation in the laboratory. Recently, it was shown that a direct current electric field inside microfluidic channel induces directed movement that is highly sensitive, reliable, and benign. In this letter, we describe the worm’s movement response to alternating electric fields in a similar channel setup. We demonstrate that the 1 Hz and higher frequency of alternating current field can effectively localize worms in the channel. This discovery could potentially help design microfluidic devices for high throughput automated analysis of worms.