Microfluidic arena for high-throughput C. elegans calcium imaging experiments with multiple strain confinement

Calcium imaging experiments involving C. elegans are increasingly popular thanks to several advantages the nematode offers in various fields of research ranging from biology to neuroscience. Microfluidics provides practical solutions not only to create a controlled environment but also to enhance the high-throughput in experiments. Here, we present a novel device to perform calcium imaging while delivering chemical stimuli in a timely controlled fashion to spatially separated groups of nematodes. The spatial separation created through worm barriers facilitates the process of associating the recorded responses to the different strains, thus contributing to the parallelization of the experiments and, ultimately, to their high-throughput. Such a device may help design a nematode-based biosensor exploiting the impressive sensing abilities of C. elegans.