Microfluidic positioning of pollen grains in lab-on-a-chip for single cell analysis

A lab-on-a-chip device with a knot shaped microfluidic network is presented to enable trapping of single pollen grains at the entrances of a series of microchannels. This set-up serves to create identical growth conditions for serially arranged tip growing plant cells such as pollen tubes. The design consists of an inlet to introduce the pollen suspension into the chip, three outlets to evacuate excess medium or cells, a distribution chamber to guide the pollen grains toward the growth microchannels and a serial arrangement of microchannels with different geometries connected to the distribution chamber. These microchannels are to harbor the individual pollen tubes. Two different criteria were established to assess the efficiency and optimize the device: trapping probability and uniformity of fluid flow conditions within the microchannels. The performance of different geometries of the microfluidic network was numerically analyzed and experimentally tested.