Undergraduate Final Project
"USING MICROFLUIDIC IMPEDANCE CYTOMETRY TO IDENTIFY THE LIFE STAGES OF C. ELEGANS NEMATODES"
This project is my undergraduate final project. I worked as a research assistant in Key Lab of MEMS of National Ministry of Education for 1 and half years.
Here is the abstract of my paper:
This paper presents a method to identify the life stages of Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) through electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) method. We designed a microfluidic chip with electrodes and a straight microchannel to measure the EIS when nematodes were flowing through the electrodes. We also designed a complete system consists of impedance spectroscopy, syringe pump, control and data acquisition circuit and data analysis software. We recorded the impedance and length of C. elegans after experiment and data analysis. The result demonstrated that the nematodes can easily pass through our system at the speed of 30μL/min. After the experiment, the nematodes still had normal life activity. The length of nematodes is linearly correlated to the cubic root of EIS. Therefore, the life stages of C. elegans can be identified by EIS and microfluidic system, and the accuracy is up to 90%. So, our method and system can identify the life stages with advantages such as high throughput, high accuracy, automation, small size and harmless to C. elegans.
I used the embedded system to control the syringe pump by controling a step motor. And I use this embedded system to drive a magnetic mixer. There is a pressure valve to help us to sort the nematodes. So I also use this embedded system to control this valve. All these functions are controlled by the computer via a URAT interface.
Figure 1: the embedded system I built.
Figure 2: Using the embedded system .
Figure 3: How to get the signal output.
I also designed the matlab control panel and the matlab data analysis platform.
Figure 3: Matlab platform.