An automated microfluidic platform for toxicity testing based on Caenorhabditis elegans
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Abstract
Humans are frequently exposed to a multitude of chemicals daily, necessitating efficient methods for rapidly assessing toxicity and potential health risks. Microfluidics has shown promise as an intelligent tool for rapid compound testing, owing to its flexibility in integrating with automated devices. The article introduces an automated microfluidic platform, based on Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) , designed for chemical toxicity testing. This platform consists of three modules – worm culture, monitoring, and image analysis – which enable automated worm culturing, drug delivery, periodic monitoring, and automated phenotypic analysis. Researchers have designed a bridged microfluidic chip that permits worms to move freely during experiments and established an economical monitoring module for long-term tracking and periodic imaging. Furthermore, they have developed an automated image analysis algorithm to automatically determine worm bending frequency. The platform was subsequently utilized for long-term toxicological assessments of the organophosphate pesticide and environmental pollutants. Results indicated that the platform can effectively evaluate the general and developmental impacts of chemicals. The automated microfluidic worm analysis platform holds significant potential for applications in drug safety assessmentand drug screening research, contributing to human health and industry advancement.
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the342total body relative fluorescence intensit
The phrase "total body" here implies the intensity is a sum, which would mean it depends on worm length. I think it'd be important to clarify this.
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. In addition, fluorescence images showed that the324body length of nematodes after exposure to L511A was significantly shorter than325that of the control group,
Does "significantly shorter" mean that the difference was statistically significant? If not statistically significant, I'm not sure it's worth mentioning. If it is, could this data be added to Figure 5?
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the overall fluorescence intensity of all GFP-labeled neurons
Is this the average intensity? (so that the intensity is independent of worm length)
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Combining the above results, we can draw the following conclusions:
If the differences were not statistically significant, I don't think these conclusions can be drawn.
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This suggests that these two flavoring substances and298tobacco component may produce neuroexcitatory effects at low doses in nematodes
Is an increase in bend frequency known to indicate neuroexcitation? It seems like it could also result from metabolic changes, perturbation of feeding behavior, or direct effects on muscle cells.
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For X6145A and Fla-1, the bend296frequency of worms also showed a trend of slightly increasing in low-dose group and297decreasing in high-dose group
If the trend wasn't statistically significant, I'm not sure this is worth commenting on.
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its bend frequency per minute was basically consistent with that of the291control grou
Is it possible to make a more more precise statement than "basically consistent"? This is a little confusing, especially since there was a statistically significant difference between the control and the higher dose.
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ig. 3A showed that treatment of MCP266and BDE-47 induced significant general toxicity in worms on this platform
How was worm death measured?
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ig. 3C&F showed270that the bend frequency of worms decreased significantly (p < 0.001) with the271increase in dose after 24 h treatment
For the 1mM MCP condition, it looks like most worms were still alive after 24 hours, but the bend frequency of all worms was zero. Does this make sense?
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Fig. 3. Toxicity evaluation of MCP and BDE-47 on the platform.
It looks like this figure is missing the number of worms analyzed for each condition. Also, the survival curves in Panel A are in discrete steps of the same size, suggesting a smaller number of worms than there are dots in Figures B and C.
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