Detection of Early Replicative Aging Events in Yeast Using Microfluidic Sorting - ISMBE 2016 - Biomedical Engineering 2016, International Convention Center Haifa, 24.2.2016

Eliezer Keinan ¹ Ayelet Chen Abraham ² Daniel Kaganovich ² Nahmias Yaakov ^1,2

¹Grass Center for Bioengineering, Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
²Cell and Developmental Biology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The budding yeast is an essential model for the molecular study of cellular aging. Many aging determinants have been studied in yeast, using single cell analysis.
Current methods cannot efficiently isolate sufficient quantities of aging yeast, for bulk analysis of aging-related molecular mechanisms. High-Reynolds inertial focusing was recently shown to push large particles toward the concave side of curved channels.
Here, we superimpose high Reynolds inertial focusing on Dean vortices trapping small particles at the channel center, to rapidly isolate large quantities of young and aging yeast from mixed populations.
Together with a new algorithm to rapidly quantify bud scars in isolated populations, we show, for the first time, that protein quality control undergoes dramatic changes early in the aging process.
These results suggest that protein quality control decreases more rapidly than previously thought, thus offering important insights into the mechanistic causes of aging.