A smart microfluidic-based fish farm for zebrafish screening

Advances in microfluidics for zebrafish processing are critical to facilitate the bioassay in new drug development. Still, a manipulation platform for zebrafish relies mainly on the static agarose material and is coupled with the conventional fish facility to ensure the time-history investigation with the homogenous zebrafish population for drug screening. A fully automated IoT (Internet of Things) microfluidics system is necessary to be developed to enable smart and high-speed zebrafish testing without the need for fish facility support. In this work, a smart microfluidic device was presented to enable (i) highly efficient temperature control with the precision of +/- 0.1 degrees C, (ii) remote zebrafish transport through light patterning, and (iii) perfusion and dynamic culturing of zebrafish all together assembled for on-chip high-quality imaging. A new microscale manipulation is envisaged to initiate a new chapter of running bioassays.

Automated summary

This study introduces a smart microfluidic device that enables efficient temperature control, remote zebrafish transport, perfusion, and dynamic culturing all together, providing the potential for on-chip high-quality imaging.