CELL-BACTERIA INTERACTION USING MICROFLUIDICS AND OPTICAL TWEEZERS

There is a dramatic need to reduce costs in biological and medical research and diagnosis, and one approach to this is developing automated methods that use computers to control routine laboratory work. This project fits within this vision, and we propose an automated method for studying the process of bacterial infection of cells. Our approach makes use of the latest developments in optics and in fabrication of patterned surfaces.

The goal of this project is to apply physical measurement techniques to address the biologically relevant question of interaction of bacteria with cells. We will use a combination of microfluidics and optical tweezers to control host and pathogen conditions, and understand the main parameters that determine the outcome of the cell/bacteria interaction. We will study in particular Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium), an important food-borne pathogen, and macrophage cells. Current biological techniques available for studying host-bacteria interactions are limited in resolution, restricted to ensemble averages from a population of cells and involve manual analysis of data. We propose to perform and monitor controlled infections at a **single-bacterium single-cell** level using cell arrays on patterned substrates and optical tweezers in automated mode. This leads to parallel experiments on a large number of cells. The main advantage of our method is to resolve the properties and outcome of interaction at each event.