Local guiding of C. elegans inside micro-channel for injection operation

This paper presents a local guiding of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) inside a micro-channel. We are interested in the nerve analysis using C. elegance as a model organism. As previous work, a micromanipulation system was used for local drug micro-injection under an optical microscope (OM) into C. elegans, however it was difficult to control the position or posture of individual C. elegans on a normal dish. In this work, micro-injection system was proposed to conduct the microinjection for individual C. elegans. electrotaxis of C. elegans was used to guide in a micro-channel. The electrotaxis is one of the natural feature of C. elegans by changing their movements depending on the electric field. It was confirmed that C. elegans moved from anode to cathode in a microfluidic channel when an electric field was applied. Two micro-channels were designed to compare the effectiveness of guiding the C. elegans to the injection point which is almost same width with C. elegans. The proposed device will be used for high accurate or efficient micro-injection to C. elegans.