Abstract

Micropatterning for High-throughput Single Cell Capture and Arrangement

Yan Sun, Associate Professor, Beihang University

Highly ordered alignment of skeletal muscle cells is the basis of myoblasts fusion and the geometric alignment of myoblasts not only affects cell fusion index but also myotube orientation. Here, a new method was developed to control both single cell shape and cell location at the same time with the high throughout. The new designed micropatternconsisted of the central circle with a diameter of 15µm for single cell capturing, small squares with the length of 3µm for cell spreading and the borders with the width of 2µm for restricting cell edges. With microcontact printing technique, it was found that the single cell capture ratio, two cells capture ratio and three cells capture ratio on new micropatterns were improved compared to those on normal micropatterns.Acquiring and analyzing fluorescence information with MATLAB, it was demonstrated that actin is gradually parallel to the direction of cells alignment, which means the cytoskeleton is mostly aligned with the overall patterns rather than the single pattern. Thisstudy is meaningful for the research on the effects of geometric arrangement on the cell-cell connection and communication.