Probing cell behavior: Combining <scp>MEMS</scp> (microelectromechanical systems) technology with high resolution live cell imaging
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cell biological experimentation has benefitted from the development of microdevices based on microfluidics and MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technology. These devices exploit the possibility to create microscopic 3D structures that can be used to manipulate single cells. Furthermore, microdevices can be used to miniaturize laboratory functions (Lab‐on‐a‐Chip). We developed an experimental platform with the specific aim to study tip growing cells, the TipChip [1]. The device allows positioning of single cells such as pollen grains or fungal spores at the entrances of serially arranged microchannels harboring microscopic experimental setups. The transport of the cells is mediated by fluid‐flow. Once positioned in the device, the tip growing cells, pollen tubes, filamentous yeast or fungal hyphae, can be exposed to chemical gradients, microstructural features, integrated biosensors or directional triggers. The device is compatible with Nomarski optics and fluorescence microscopy and can thus be used for live cell imaging. Using the TipChip platform we investigated the growth mechanism in pollen tubes. The pollen tube is a cellular transport system that is generated to connect the male gametophyte with its female counterpart. Through this catheter‐like protuberance the sperm cells are delivered from the pollen grain to the ovule nestled deep within the pistillar tissues. To be competitive, the pollen tube elongates extremely rapidly and it has to do so against the impedance of the apoplast of the transmitting tissue and through the maze of pistillar cells that separate the pollen grain from the ovule. Using calibrated micro‐cantilevers we quantified the invasive force of the pollen tube and we found that sperm cell discharge can be triggered by mechanical constriction [2]. Further applications include exposure of cells to precisely calibrated electric fields and micron‐sharp, tunable chemical gradients. The TipChip is therefore a highly versatile tool for the combined quantitative biophysical and optical investigation of polar growth in plant cells.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".