Figure 1.

Dynamics of the two-strain oscillator in large microfluidic devices. (a) Circuit diagram of the two-strain oscillator. (b) Simplified schematic of an extended “hallway” microfluidic device (Supplementary Fig. 10b). This device is similar to the compact chamber used by Chen et al, 2015¹³, with the width of the chamber extended to 2000μm. (c) Representative fluorescence images of cells growing in the extended hallway device (n=3 independent experiments). The spatial arrangement of the two strains keeps fluctuating (red arrows point to two areas of high fluctuation). (d) Simplified schematic of the extended “open” microfluidic device 2000μm in width (Supplementary Fig. 10a). The trap is open on all sides, allowing cells to align vertically, and thus minimizing fluctuations in spatial arrangement of the two cell strains. (e) Representative fluorescence images of cells growing in the open device (n=18 independent experiments). The spatial arrangement of the cells eventually stabilizes, simplifying the spatio-temporal dynamics of the two-strain oscillator. The images show times at which fluorescence is high.