Fig. 1.

Design and operation details of the microfluidic chip. (A) Cartoon illustrating the loading of rod-shaped bacterial cells (red) into cell traps. Arrows indicate flow direction during loading. (B) Fraction of cell traps with at least one E. coli cell at different time points. The different markers correspond to different density cell cultures. (C) A phase contrast image of E. coli in the microfluidic device (darker regions) using a 20× objective. (D) A small part of a phase contrast image taken at 100× showing the back end of the cell trap, where the flow restriction region captures the cells during loading.