Fig. 1

Overview of the microfluidic DYLC chip. A Photograph of the PDMS microchannel including 53 cylindrical posts and a cell-trap array. B Micrograph of the array patterning into 5 subarrays with a gap of 100 μm in between. Each subarray contains 10 × 22 traps. Distances between columns and rows are 30 and 34 μm, respectively. Traps are aligned to the middle of the spacings between two neighboring traps in adjacent columns. Insert is a SEM micrograph of the trap array. Scale bar is 10 μm. C A schematic cartoon showing the cell loading and trapping processes in the array. D 3D schematics showing the geometric dimension of the “leaky bowl”-shaped trap, the hydrodynamic bud rotation and the concerted daughter dissection. The trap features a 7 μm × 15 μm × 8 μm outer profile in xyz-dimension, with a 5 μm × 8 μm wide opening upstream and a 2 μm × 3 μm narrow orifice downstream. The bud of immobilized mother cell tends to be rotated into the narrow opening downstream and then removed under the hydrodynamic shearing forces