Speaker
Description
Biological systems are a unique class of active matter in which individual units —living cells— consume energy to process information and adapt to changing environments. Investigating such adaptive responses requires experimental platforms capable of delivering precisely controlled, time-dependent stimuli while enabling long-term, high-resolution observation at the single-cell level. Here we present a microfluidics setup to study history-dependent responses in bacterial cells and to probe how intracellular networks encode and process environmental information.
We focus on how gene regulatory and signaling networks enable cells to integrate past stimuli and modulate future responses. To this end, we track gene expression using fluorescent reporters in individual bacteria confined within two-dimensional microfluidic chambers. The microfluidic device enables fine control of the extracellular environment by dynamically modulating medium composition (e.g., antibiotics, nutrients) with well-defined spatial and temporal profiles. This simple and versatile setup allows rapid switching, periodic stimulation, and long-term conditioning protocols while maintaining stable growth conditions and optical accessibility. By combining controlled microfluidic perturbations with quantitative single-cell measurements, we can systematically explore how environmental histories shape phenotypic states and collective behavior.
Overall, this work highlights microfluidics as a powerful tool for interrogating non-equilibrium biological dynamics and adaptive processes in living matter. Beyond its biological implications, the approach provides a general framework for designing microfluidic experiments that couple precise environmental control with dynamical readouts, enabling studies of memory, robustness, and information processing in living matter.