Filling System of Cell-Laden Hydrogels in a PDMS Microarray for Analyzing Multiple Wells in One-Shot of a Microscope

This paper describes the fabrication of hydrogel microarrays containing living cells that can be imaged in the one-shot image of a microscope. The fabrication method involves using the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) containing multiple embedded pillars, and these pillars can be pulled independently. Pulling each pillar makes the pre-gel solution fill inside the hollow of PDMS. This system enables filling different gel colors in the arrays in a controlled manner. Yeast is a good candidate for cell-based detection of chemicals due to its ability to detect chemical components and resistance to environmental stresses. As a demonstration, we filled the microarrays with yeast cells expressing GFP when in contact with yeast pheromone, one kind of peptide. We believe this array system will lead to the creation of yeast arrays with various receptor expressions that could be analyzed by a one-shot image.