Issue 1, 2015

Inducing microscopic thermal lesions for the dissection of functional cell networks on a chip

Abstract

We present a versatile chip-based method to inflict microscopic lesions on cellular networks or tissue models. Our approach relies on resistive heating of microstructured conductors to impose highly localized thermal stress on specific regions of a cell network. We show that networks can be precisely dissected into individual subnetworks using a microwire crossbar array. To this end, we pattern a network of actively beating cardiomyocyte-like cells into smaller subunits by inflicting thermal damage along selected wires of the array. We then investigate the activity and functional connectivity of the individual subnetworks using a Ca2+ imaging-based signal propagation analysis. Our results demonstrate the efficient separation of functional activity between individual subnetworks on a microscopic level. We believe that the presented technique may become a powerful tool for investigating lesion and regeneration models in cellular networks.

Graphical abstract: Inducing microscopic thermal lesions for the dissection of functional cell networks on a chip

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
10 Jul 2014
Accepted
27 Oct 2014
First published
27 Oct 2014
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Lab Chip, 2015,15, 237-243

Author version available

Inducing microscopic thermal lesions for the dissection of functional cell networks on a chip

P. Rinklin, D. Afanasenkau, S. Wiegand, A. Offenhäusser and B. Wolfrum, Lab Chip, 2015, 15, 237 DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00805G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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