Microfluidic Devices for Anesthetic Free In-vivo Axonal Transport Imaging

Microfluidic devices have been used for in-vitro studies in the past while recently they have been extended for in-vivo studies in whole organisms. In this report we use a microfluidic device for high resolution fluorescence imaging of axonal transport in model systems Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila larvae. The device immobilized animals are compared with respect to the anesthetized animals using standard anesthetics. Early stage animals could be imaged only in microfluidic devices. Vesicle transport was found to become smoother with development when different stages were imaged in the devices. We found sufficient mitochondrial transport in undissected first instars Drosophila larvae.