Microfluidic electric parallel egg-laying assay and application to in-vivo toxicity screening of microplastics using C. elegans.

Environmental pollutants like microplastics are posing health concerns on aquatic animals and the ecosystem. Microplastic toxicity studies using Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as a model are evolving but methodologically hindered from obtaining statistically strong data sets, detecting toxicity effects based on microplastics uptake, and correlating physiological and behavioural effects at an individual-worm level.

Electric egg-laying: a new approach for regulating egg-laying behaviour in a microchannel using electric field.

In this paper, the novel effect of electric field (EF) on adult C. elegans egg-laying in a microchannel is discovered and correlated with neural and muscular activities. The quantitative effects of worm aging and EF strength, direction, and exposure duration on egg-laying are studied phenotypically using egg-count, body length, head movement, and transient neuronal activity readouts.

Parallel-Channel Electrotaxis and Neuron Screening of .

In this paper, we report a novel microfluidic method to conduct a electrotaxis movement assay and neuronal imaging on up to 16 worms in parallel. is a model organism for neurodegenerative disease and movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD), and for screening chemicals that alleviate protein aggregation, neuronal death, and movement impairment in PD. Electrotaxis of in microfluidic channels has led to the development of neurobehavioral screening platforms, but enhancing the throughput of the electrotactic behavioral assay has remained a challenge.

The SEM-4 Transcription Factor Is Required for Regulation of the Oxidative Stress Response in .

Oxidative stress causes damage to cells by creating reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the overproduction of ROS have been linked to the onset of premature aging. We previously found that a (BRCA1 associated protein 2) mutant significantly increases the expression of phase II detoxification enzymes in An RNAi suppression screen to identify transcription factors involved in the production of mRNA in worms identified SEM-4 as a potential candidate. Here, we show that knockdown of suppresses the activation of caused by the mutation in We also demonstrate that required for survival upon exposure to oxidative stress and that SEM-4 is required for expression of the transcription factor SKN-1C.

The Oxidative Stress Response Requires the NHR-49 Transcription Factor.

The overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells can lead to the development of diseases associated with aging. We have previously shown that BRAP-2 (Brca1 associated binding protein 2) regulates phase II detoxification genes such as , by increasing SKN-1 activity. Previously, a transcription factor (TF) RNAi screen was conducted to identify potential activators that are required to induce expression in mutants.