Design and Fabrication of the Microextensor

Caenorhabditis elegans worms (C. elegans) and Danio rerio (commonly known as Zebrafish) have been used as model organisms in medicinal and genetic research to model and characterize human diseases for new drug identification and testing to treat the diseases being modeled. In order to achieve a better understanding of these model organisms, the imaging of these biological samples is important to enable scientists to analyze such living systems. A new technique that ensures the preservation of samples during bioimaging is the use of a microextensor, or a transparent microtubing that can be stretched to immobilize a sample inside it. We were able to fabricate such tubing to perform 360-degree bioimaging of both C.elegans and Zebrafish larvae and are currently working towards using this tubing for immobilizing these model organisms during drug administration for drug testing.