EFFICIENT MICRODEVICES DESIGNS FOR CHOANOFLAGELLATES SEPARATION

Abstract

Choanoflagellates are microorganisms of great interest in evolutionary biology because they are considered to be the closest living relatives to animals. In their unicellular form, they developed phenotypes with different swimming strategies and the ability to produce sexual gametes. Based on the work of Sparacino et al.,J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.(2020), new designs of microfluidic devices were proposed and explored with consideration to both microfabrication restrictions and microscopy observation limitations. Through a phenomenological model, adapted to the dynamics of unicellular choanoflagellates in an asymmetric microdevice, it was possible to separate the fast cells, reconcentrating them up to 8times. It was observed in a temporal window independent of the geometry, minimizing the biological variation of the samples. Furthermore, new biotechnological applications were explored to model different biological behaviors related to the taxis responses experienced by a cell. It was noted that populations with lower change of direction are efficiently concentrated in the proposed microdevice