Fig 1.
(a) Design concept and functionality—The LoC is loaded with grains and nutrient medium, the grains germinate, and the pollen tubes are self-guided into the microchannels, allowing for massively parallelized optical imaging and micro-indentation. (b) The design layout of the lily LoC with a magnified view of an individual cell. (c),(d) Scanning electron micrographs of the fabricated PDMS chip for lily.
Fig 2.
Germination, growth, and parallel guidance of pollen tubes in the LoC device.
(a) The LoC is injected with nutrient medium containing lily pollen grains that become concentrated and appear as yellowish circles. (b) A view of a lily unit cell immediately after injection of grains. (c) Three lily pollen tubes are guided into neighboring channels and can be simultaneously imaged at high magnification. (d) A stitch of the three unit cells shows the equifocal unidirectional guidance of a large number of lily pollen tubes. (e) This stitch shows the guidance of eleven A. thaliana pollen tubes in a single unit cell. N = number of tubes guided in a unit cell.
Fig 3.
System integration of the LoC with the Cellular Force Microscope and micro-indentation dataset.
(a) High-throughput micro-indentation measurements are possible because directionally guided tubes emerge out of the channels. (b) The apparent stiffness (unloading) of growing tubes is measured along the length of the tube near the apex region. (c) The apparent stiffness (loading and unloading) of the shank area of growing lily tubes compared to that of non-growing tubes. (n denotes the number of tubes and m denotes the total number of indentations on n tubes).