Skip to main content
PLOS One logoLink to PLOS One
. 2022 Oct 27;17(10):e0275804. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0275804

Cost-efficient boundary-free surface patterning achieves high effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments

Guohao Liang 1,#, Hong Yin 1,#, Jun Allard 2,3, Fangyuan Ding 1,2,4,*
Editor: Kun Chen5
PMCID: PMC9612557  PMID: 36301804

Abstract

Time-lapse microscopy plays critical roles in the studies of cellular dynamics. However, setting up a time-lapse movie experiments is not only laborious but also with low output, mainly due to the cell-losing problem (i.e., cells moving out of limited field of view), especially in a long-time recording. To overcome this issue, we have designed a cost-efficient way that enables cell patterning on the imaging surfaces without any physical boundaries. Using mouse embryonic stem cells as an example system, we have demonstrated that our boundary-free patterned surface solves the cell-losing problem without disturbing their cellular phenotype. Statistically, the presented system increases the effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments by an order of magnitude.

Introduction

Single-cell time-lapse microscopy has been used in many cell studies. It provides a dynamic picture of cellular regulation and has revealed many unexpected cellular regulation mechanisms [13] previously hidden with conventional population-based techniques. For instance, dynamic studies have helped discover factors in stem cell fate choices [4, 5], the dynamics of epigenetic regulation [6, 7], and the pulsatile nature of transcription in response to stress [8, 9].

Time-lapse microscopy generally functions in the following way [10, 11]. Live cells are placed under a microscope in a temperature, CO2, and humidity-controlled chamber to allow for long periods of cell dynamics tracking. Images are taken at a set time interval (minutes up to an hour) for an extended amount of time (hours to days) to observe the full process of interest, then all time-series images are assembled to produce a movie. If observation of multiple colonies is desired, a motorized stage could be used to move the culture plate to pre-programmed positions, aligning the objective to the desired colonies at each capture time. In this plate-scanning mode, images will be assembled based on their respective location and time to produce one movie for each position, providing parallel data output.

However, this modality remains problematic for studies requiring high amplification with extended tracking time and/or large data throughput. For example, entire lineage tracking can take 4–7 days to complete [12, 13] and a given colony of cells needs to be tracked from beginning to end. This is challenging because cells stay mobile throughout the tracking period and may move away from the limited field of view under high amplification, thus voiding the movie at that position. Manual adjustments to the pre-programmed positions are not feasible due to the frequency of image acquisition. Additionally, studies desiring to observe a heterogeneous population (e.g. stem cell heterogeneity [1416]) are also hindered by this issue, since high throughput is required to sample the wide range of scenarios in a heterogeneous population. In theory, hundreds of positions on a culture dish could be pre-programmed and imaged in the plate-scanning mode, achieving large parallel cell colony input. However, cells randomly moving out of the field of view means that the number of positions retaining cells at the end of recording is unpredictable. Therefore, high effective-throughput, in which most if not all imaging positions retain cells throughout the time-lapse recording, is key for advancing the modality.

Previous works have made many efforts to increase the effective-throughput of time-lapse movies. For instance, wide-field microscopy [17, 18] has been adapted to increase the information density of time-lapse imaging. This system does not take images position-by-position, but instead takes one wide-field image (6 mm X 4 mm) at once. However, this system has lower resolution (700 nm ~ 1.2 μm) [17, 18], rendering it not ideal for experiments requiring high resolution to track cell divisions and movements (such as stem cell differentiation). Additionally, physical boundaries made of PDMS have also been used to confine cells for time-lapse imaging to increase the effective-throughput by minimizing cell loss in lineage experiments [1]. But such methods are not compatible with all types of cell experiment, as the physical confinement and contact induce phenotypic changes [1921]. Furthermore, photolithography is another approach to deposit either physical or non-physical boundaries for cell confinement [2224]. However, the high cost of this approach prohibits it from being widely used. Most molecular and cellular biology labs (like us) do not have easy access to clean rooms, which makes the photolithography patterning not only expensive, but also not universally applicable. In addition, using photolithography here can be wasteful, as this technique is capable of nanometer resolution patterning [25], while avoiding cell-loss under the field of view requires only a scale of hundred micrometers patterning.

Here we propose a proof-of-principle high-informative, boundary-free, and cheap cell-patterning method to increase the effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy. By using PDMS stencils with arrays of pre-punched holes (hundred microns in diameter), we can pattern the glass surface into zones with various adhesion to cells without physical boundaries. This method confines the cultured cells to the high affinity zones at low cell density, but still allows them to grow in the low affinity zones once the high adhesive area is populated. We have demonstrated the system working for sensitive cell types (mouse embryonic stem cell) for a 4-days time-lapse movie. Estimates from simple simulations suggest that our system can improve the throughput by at least an order of magnitude.

Material and methods

PDMS stencil with holes

To create isolated spots of cell adhesive surface, we have fabricated a PDMS stencil containing numerous holes (~250 μm diameter). First, we made PDMS using the Sylgard 184 silicone elastomer kit (10:1 base/curing ratio by weight). Second, a blank PDMS sheet of 250 μm thickness was manufactured by allowing liquid PDMS (degassed by vacuum half hour) to solidify in a metal mold (Fig 1A). The mold was fabricated by a Caltech machine shop (The GALCIT Shop), but it can also be ordered commercially in most off-campus machine shops. Then, the PDMS sheet was transferred onto a thin (~ 1 mm thick) mylar support and placed on the bed of a VLS350 (Universal Laser Systems, Arizona, USA). To produce holes, a pattern was created using the CorelDraw software (Corel, Ottawa, Canada) with a light gray shape (color 0xFDFDFD) where a field of holes is desired. The laser then performed a raster scan at 100% power (S1 Movie), and the scan was repeated three times to ensure the holes fully penetrate the PDMS membrane. Raster scanning was used because it is considerably faster than cutting small holes using the vector mode. Finally, a vector cut was performed to cut along the circular outline of the stencil (S2 Movie), with a notch placed so we can determine the stencil’s orientation, as the bottom surface is much smoother and adheres better to glass than the top surface. The stencil was then washed by 95% EtOH to remove vaporized PDMS residue and sterilized.

Fig 1. We have fabricated reusable PDMS stencils by laser cutting.

Fig 1

(A) We used a metal mold, with a 250 μm gap, to manufacture a degassed PDMS sheet of 250 μm thickness (more details described in Materials and Methods). Worth mentioning, PDMS sheets with similar thickness are also commercially available. (B) We used a laser printer to penetrate holes (~250 μm diameters) on the PDMS sheet (more details in Materials and Methods). (C) About 1000 holes were created in a ~19mm diameter area, a size compatible to pattern a 35mm glass-bottom cell culture dish.

Surface patterning

With the fabricated PDMS stencil, we have achieved to coat the glass surface into a cell adhesive pattern. First, we used 95% EtOH to clean the PDMS stencil and applied nitrogen air to blow dry. Second, we put the stencil on top of the glass bottom (Ibidi® 35mm dish 81218–200). One can improve the attachment either by manually squeezing the PDMS onto the glass surface or using a quick vacuum pressure. Third, we performed the plasma treatment, at pressure 800–1000 with medium RF level for 10 mins using the plasma cleaner (PDC-32G, HARRICK PLASMA). Fourth, we added 10 ug/ml laminin (human laminin-511, BioLamina) into the dish (about 250ul, the exact volume may vary, as long as it can cover the glass surface and PDMS stencil), with a 5 mins vacuum treatment (to get rid of bubbles in the stencil holes), then incubated at 37°C for 1 hr. Fifth, we washed the dish with PBS three times, added 0.2% BSA-Biotin solution (Pierce™ Bovine Serum Albumin, Biotinylated Catalog number: 29130), and removed the PDMS stencil. After incubating 1 hr at 37°C, we washed the dish with PBS three times again. Finally, we added the labeled Streptavidin (Alexa Fluor® 405 conjugate Catalog number: S32351), incubated 10 mins at room temperature, then washed the dish again with PBS. Despite the patterned glass surface capable of being stored in 4C for days, we recommend using a freshly prepared sample for time-lapse movie experiments.

Culture conditions and cell line construction

Brachyury-GFP mouse embryonic stem cells (E14.1, 129/Ola, from previous publication [26], and we did not test for mycoplasm) are cultured in a humidity controlled chamber at 37°C with 5% CO2, and plated on tissue culture plates pre-coated with 0.1% gelatin (relatively cheaper compared to laminin, better option for daily culture) and cultured in standard pluripotency-maintaining conditions [27, 28] using DMEM supplemented with 15% FBS (ES qualified, GIBCO), 1 mM sodium pyruvate, 1 unit/ml penicillin, 1 μg/ml streptomycin, 2 mM L-glutamine, 1X MEM non-essential amino acids, 55 mM β-mercaptoethanol, and 1000 Units/ml leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF). Cells were passaged by Accutase (GIBCO). For differentiation experiments, cells were cultured in the same medium, without LIF, but adding 3 μM CHIR.

To label the nucleus with CFP, we have transfected a plasmid with H2B-mCerulean into the Brachyury-GFP E14 cell lines. First, we have cloned H2B-mCerulean into a pcDNA5 expression vector under a PGK promoter. Second, we have followed the standard protocol of FuGENE® HD Transfection Reagent (Promega Corporation) to perform the transfection. Then, the surviving transfected cells with strong CFP signal were sorted by Caltech FACS Facility. Finally, we plated the sorted ~271k cells, let it grow for another 4 days and froze them for further experiments and lab storage.

Time-lapse microscopy imaging

For the 35 cm glass-bottom dish, we plated about 25k cells with complete cell media to achieve a proper cell density: 1–2 cells per patterned area. The dish was manually swayed [29] to uniformly spread the cells and left in the incubator for 2–3 hr before imaging. Details of time-lapse microscopy setting have been described previously [30]. For each movie, about 100 stage positions were picked manually, and CFP images were acquired every 15 mins with an Olympus 60x oil objective using automated acquisition software (Metamorph, Molecular Devices, San Jose, CA), then differential interference contrast and GFP images were acquired at the beginning and the end of the movie.

Lineage tracking

Cells were segmented and tracked using the H2B-mCerulean with custom MATLAB code (available upon request), as described in previous publication [6] and detailed again here: (1) Initially, images were processed to correct for inhomogeneous fluorescent illumination by fitting a paraboloid to background (non-cell) pixel intensities, and then normalizing the image by this paraboloid. (2) We then used an integrated segmentation and tracking procedure which combined (a) a pixel-based intensity threshold for segmentation, (b) a tracking algorithm based on global minimization of a cost function that incorporates cell positions and fluorescence intensities, and (c) heuristics that use discontinuities in tracking to correct segmentation. (3) Finally, all individual cell lineages were checked and corrected manually.

Simulation of colony growth

Cells are positioned to maintain compactness and the colony is approximately circular. We can implement colony growth in the simulation in two models.

First, in the synchronized cell cycle model, we assume all cells have synchronized cell cycles. As shown in S5 Movie, a cell (radius 7.5 μm) was placed at the center of the field of view (1024 pixel by 1024 pixel, with pixel size 216.7 nm, from the value of our microscopy camera). Based on our recorded movies, we set cells moving 1 μm per min and dividing every 12 hr. Every step of a cell moving was in a random direction, and every cell division doubled cell colony size.

Alternatively, if cell cycles are not synchronized, we can simulate continuous stochastic growth by employing a Gillespie algorithm [31] in which we track the number of cells n(t) over time. If there are n(t) cells at time t, the mean time to next cell division is

tnext=12hrsnln(rand)

where rand is a uniform random number in (0,1). At each division event, the area of the colony is increased by πr12 here r1 = 7.5 um is the radius of a single cell.

The geometric-mean colony size over 4 days is ⟨r⟩ ≈ 120 μm.

Analysis of colony movement

We assume the colony migration is well-described by a simple random walk model.

Simple random walks are described by a random walk parameter (diffusion coefficient) Drw. Roughly speaking, the random walk parameter Drw is the instantaneous velocity multiplied by the directional persistence length, which is itself roughly the distance the colony migrates before changing direction [32]. The relationship between the mean displacement <r> over a time dt and the random walk parameter is

r=πDrwdt

Using ⟨r⟩ = 15 μm and dt = 15 min gives Drw = 4.8 μm2 /min.

Analytic approximations

We can get a rough estimate under the approximation that the colony size is fixed. For this, we use the geometric mean size ⟨r⟩ ≈ 120 μm. The mean time for a colony of size <r> to have moved to the edge of the adhesive zone [33], where it is approximately 50% escaped, is

T=(Rzone)24Drw=13.6hr

where Rzone = 125 μm is the radius of the adhesive zone. Note this is a significant approximation since the colony size is varying from much smaller than the adhesive zone during Day 1 to much larger in Day 4.

Results and discussion

As described in the Materials and Methods and illustrated in Fig 1, we first used the laser to punch holes (about 250 μm diameter) on a PDMS sheet, which took less than 10 mins to punch ~1000 holes in a ~19 mm diameter area (S1 and S2 Movies). Specifically, we used a PDMS sheet with 250 μm thickness. This is because thinner PDMS was too fragile to handle, while punching on a thicker PDMS created holes with cross slopes [34]. We have found that 250 μm is the optimal thickness capable of achieving relatively flat channel cross-sections (Fig 1B). The laser cutting characteristics are not affected by the PDMS base/curing ratio. We did not observe any significant difference between the 5:1 and 10:1 mixing. It is worth mentioning that despite the fact that we fabricated the 250 μm PDMS sheets using a home-made metal mold (Materials and Methods and Fig 1A), these sheets are also commercially available. Moreover, once fabricated, the PDMS stencil is reusable (we did not see a big difference after one year usage). Taken together, unlike most lithography patterning systems [35], which are expensive and equipment-heavy, our protocol is more accessible and cost-efficient for most biology labs.

Using the PDMS stencil with pre-punched holes, we can pattern a glass surface into various adhesion zones without physical boundaries. As shown in Fig 2A (and described in Materials and Methods), we used the PDMS stencil to coat the exposed area with extracellular matrix (we used laminin here, but our unshown data confirms other options, such as fibronectin, also work). We then peeled the stencil off and incubated the pre-covered glass with blocker BSA. To observe the boundary of high/low adhesion zones, we used a biotin labeled version of BSA, which can be specifically bound to Streptavidin later (with Alexa405 pre-labeled). Note that, although we also used plasma treatment (Materials and Methods), it was performed after plating the PDMS, i.e., only treating the opened glass surface (i.e., hole-area) to better coat the extracellular matrix. This is the opposite of most lab-on-a-chip experiments, where the plasma treatment is applied to the entire glass surface [1, 24]. In the latter case, the PDMS cannot be peeled off, but ours is detachable and reusable.

Fig 2. ESCs stayed in the high-adhesive patterned confined area.

Fig 2

(A) We have used the fabricated PDMS with ~1000 holes as the stencil to coat the glass surface into high-adhesive zones (with laminin, green) and low-adhesive zones (with BSA, labeled with Alexa 405, red). (B) When plating ESCs onto the patterned surface, they formed well-shaped cell colonies in the high-adhesive zones. Worth mentioning, there are some mysterious shaded lines and colonies with high-intensity in the left and middle images. This is because, in order to cover the entire glass bottom of the 35mm culture dish, we have scanned the surface with 36 overlapping images then pieced them up. The uneven high-intensity and shade were generated due to the overlapping.

To test whether cells can be confined within the high affinity zones on the patterned surface without physical boundaries, we chose to plate mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs). This is because: 1) This cell type is very sensitive to culturing conditions [27]. If our patterned surface works for ESC, it is more likely to be universally applicable to other cell types; 2) High effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy (as discussed in the Introduction) is essential for ESC dynamics studies. First, high resolution imaging (using at least 60x objective) is necessary, because ESC constantly forms colonies, where cells are closed attached and difficult to segment into individual cells [27, 28]. However, higher resolution often results in a smaller field of view, i.e., more severe cell-losing problems. Moreover, the high heterogeneity in the stem cell population needs, not only numerous time-lapse movies, but also the entire lineage tracking of each cell colony, to study their dynamic behaviors. Taken together, we have chosen ESC as the example system to demonstrate the efficiency of our boundary-free patterning system.

We first checked whether ESCs can sense the high-/low- adhesive zones. Specifically, we incubated a large amount of (about 250k) in a 35 mm cell dish with patterned glass-bottom surface for 4 hr, then washed the extra cells away. As shown in Fig 2B, we have found that the cells have much higher affinity to the extracellular matrix coated zone and the efficiency of the patterning is high. When the surface was not covered with laminin but only patterned with BSA (such as the top right corner of the dish, Fig 2B left), no cell patterns had formed (Fig 2B middle). This observation also confirms the high specificity of ESCs’ preference for the high-adhesive zones. Note that, the no-laminin coating of the top right corner was due to a weaker attachment of the PDMS stencil edges to the glass surface. We did not further optimize the stencil attachment step, as more than 95% of the ~1000 patterned zones were forming confined patterns (Fig 2B right) and several hundreds of patterned zones are already sufficient for a typical time-lapse microscope experiment. Taken together, we have found that our patterning protocol can achieve efficient boundary-free adhesion zones for ESCs.

We next tested live cell growth, verifying whether ESCs can be restricted in the confined area for longer times. Specifically, we incubated low cell density of ESCs (with 1–2 cells per confined area) at day 1 and let them grow in the standard culture condition for 4 days. As shown in Fig 3, even if the cells were initially located on the edge of the confined area, they still grew into a colony within the confined area. Some cells did not grow into colonies, but this is because ESCs do not thrive in low density, regardless of the surface patterning. Remarkably, as the pattern is boundary-free, once the cell colony gets bigger, the colony can expand out (still centered around the confined area) (Fig 3), which is distinct from previous PDMS patterning systems with boundaries [24, 35].

Fig 3. ESCs grew 4 days in the patterned surface.

Fig 3

Cells preferred growing in the confined high-adhesive (not red) area, even if they were initially located on the edge. The pattern is boundary-free, so cells started expanding out at day 4. The red background is the fluorescent 405 channel, i.e., the low-adhesive zone. The uneven shading is due to the scanned image overlapping (similar as in Fig 2B).

We then performed a real time-lapse movie with the patterned system. First, we fluorescently labeled the ESC nucleus with CFP (Materials and Methods, Fig 4A) and verified its pre-embedded GFP-brachyury reporter, which indicates the transition from cells’ pluripotent state to mesoderm state (data not shown). The CFP labeling, as well as the heterogeneity of CFP signals between cells, can help simplify the cell segmentation and tracking processes, as the signal is more distinguishable especially compared to the phase imaging (Fig 4B). A typical 4-days recording is shown in Fig 4C and S3 Movie. Similar as in Fig 3, we have found that cells preferred growing in the high-adhesive patterned zone. Once the confined area was filled, cells expanded out.

Fig 4. ESCs maintained their phenotype on the patterned surface in a time-lapse microscopy.

Fig 4

A) We have labeled the ESC nucleus with CFP. The ESC has a pre-embedded differentiation indicator GFP-Brachyury. B) CFP signal has high heterogeneity in the ESC population, which helps the cell segmentation and lineage tracking. C) 9 snapshots from S3 Movie, which is a 4-days time-lapse movie of ESC on the patterned surface. The red circles indicate the confined high-adhesive area. D) A snapshot of time-lapse movie shows the ESC colony has diverse brachyury signals in the population.

We have further checked whether ESCs maintain their phenotype with the patterned system. First, we have observed the positive brachyury signal with high heterogeneity (as shown in Fig 4D) in 40 out 47 recorded ESC colonies at day 4, which is also consistent with previous mesoderm induction studies [36]. Second, as a comparison, we performed the no-pattern (with uniform laminin coating, without pattern or BSA) time-lapse movie (example in S4 Movie). We have found cells maintain similar motions under both conditions, and their division times are comparable too: 14.25 ± 1.64 hr under no-pattern condition, and 14.75 ± 2.51 hr under patterned system. These values are also consistent to previous publications [36]. These results together confirm that ESCs, despite their sensitivity to culturing conditions, have mostly maintained their physiology on our boundary-free patterned surface.

Finally, we have quantified how much the patterned system can improve the effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments. First, we can track more stage positions with the patterned surface. The time interval of time-lapse movie frames is often set to be 10–20 mins, because any time longer causes difficulty in cell-identification and cell-tracking due to the mobility of most cultured cells. When cells are plated randomly, the recorded positions are manually picked (a laborious process, taking hours) and mostly far apart. As both piezo-stage moving and auto-focus processes have constrained speed, requiring about 3–10 seconds to transit from one position to another, it often takes up to half of the time in the limited time intervals (the other half is for the real imaging process). Now, with the patterned surface, both position-picking and position-transit are simplified (Fig 5A), which saves half of the transit time and enables recording ~1.5 times more positions per movie. For instance, with 15mins time-interval ESC movie tracking, we have achieved picking 119 positions in total. Second, the patterned surface solves the cell losing problem and has a significantly higher chance to record the entire dynamic lineage of an ESC colony. For instance, in a typical experiment, where we tracked 47 surviving ESC colonies in 4 days, 34 of them were recorded with a full lineage (i.e., no cell moved out of field of view, until the colony became too big and was squeezed out. By entire lineage, we define it as at least 90% of the colony being captured throughout the 4 days, like in Fig 4C and S3 Movie). In the other 13 positions, at least half of the colonies were captured. Together, 100% positions have captured >50% of the cell lineage and about 72.3% positions obtained the entire lineage.

Fig 5. The patterned surface improves the effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments.

Fig 5

A) Microscopy has scanned the stage positions in order. B) The majority positions of a patterned surface can record the full lineage of a cell colony, with a ratio significantly higher than the no-pattern case.

To further quantify the improvement of the effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments, we need to compare the lineage recording rate of ESCs on a patterned surface versus the no-pattern case. However, under no-pattern system, we can barely catch even a single entire lineage colony in an experiment (e.g., we only obtained one position, out of 79 tracked positions, with 50% lineage captured). Thus, it is impractical to collect sufficient data for statistics. We therefore performed a mathematical simulation to estimate the no-pattern situation, with both synchronized cell cycle and continuous stochastic growth model (more details in Materials and Methods). A typical cell-losing case is in S5 Movie. By simulating 100,000 movies, we found 24.5% ± 4.6% positions have captured >50% lineages, but only 2.2% ± 1.6% positions have >90% lineage under the synchronized cell cycle mode (Fig 5B), and similarly, 22.9% ± 4.3% positions have captured >50% lineages, but only 3.6% ± 2.0% positions have >90% lineage under the continuous stochastic growth mode. Taken together, for experiments that require full lineage tracking (like ESC differentiation studies with high heterogeneity [36, 37]), our patterned surface can help improve >30 times effective-throughput of a time-lapse microscopy experiment.

It is worth mentioning that we have focused on culturing ESCs on the patterned surface in this work. Further optimization shall be tested for different cell types, especially about the specific choices of different blockers and extracellular matrices. For instance, we have found the protocol working less efficient for C2C12, a myoblast cell line, but mixing Pluronic F-127 with BSA helped. In addition, the developed method has a limitation to cell types that have preference to different surface affinities and will not be applicable to cells capable of growing unbiasedly on either high-affinity coated, low-affinity coated, or uncoated surface.

Conclusion

We have demonstrated a cheap and boundary-free surface patterning protocol that is adaptable to usage by a wide community (especially most standard biology labs without easy access to lithography). The patterned surface has reliable bio-compatibility, as even a sensitive cell type like the ESC maintained its phenotype during a 4-days movie recording. This system significantly reduces the cell-losing problem during time-lapse microscopy movies and improves the effective-throughput per experiment by an order of magnitude. Further studies of alternative extracellular matrix and blocker options will enable this patterning protocol applicable to other cell types and cell growth conditions.

Supporting information

S1 Movie. A movie showing how laser cutting machine penetrates the PDMS stencils using the raster scan mode.

(MOV)

S2 Movie. A movie showing how laser cutting machine outlines the PDMS stencils using the vector mode.

(MP4)

S3 Movie. A typical 4-days time-lapse movie with the patterned system.

We have found that cells preferred growing in the high-adhesive zone (circled). As the pattern is boundary-free, cells can expand out once the confined area was filled (at around 90 hr in the movie).

(AVI)

S4 Movie. A typical time-lapse movie without any patterned system.

We can barely catch a single entire lineage colony. In the shown move, we lose the colony within 2 days.

(AVI)

S5 Movie. A simulation of colony growth with the synchronized cell cycle model.

(MP4)

Data Availability

All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding Statement

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation DMS 2052668 (to A.J.) and generous startup funds from the University of California-Irvine (to F.D.). F.D. is the recipient of NIH Director's New Innovator Award 1DP2GM149554. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

References

  • 1.Piltti KM, Cummings BJ, Carta K, Manughian-Peter A, Worne CL, Singh K, et al. Live-cell time-lapse imaging and single-cell tracking of in vitro cultured neural stem cells—Tools for analyzing dynamics of cell cycle, migration, and lineage selection. Methods. 2018;133: 81–90. doi: 10.1016/j.ymeth.2017.10.003 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 2.Paniagua-Herranz L, Gómez-Villafuertes R, de Agustín-Durán D, Gascón S, Pérez-Sen R, Delicado EG, et al. Time-Lapse Video Microscopy and Single Cell Tracking to Study Neural Cell Behavior In Vitro. Methods Mol Biol. 2020;2150: 183–194. doi: 10.1007/7651_2019_219 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 3.Chiu Y-J, Cai W, Shih Y-RV, Lian I, Lo Y-H. A Single-Cell Assay for Time Lapse Studies of Exosome Secretion and Cell Behaviors. Small. 2016;12: 3658–3666. doi: 10.1002/smll.201600725 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 4.Wolff SC, Kedziora KM, Dumitru R, Dungee CD, Zikry TM, Beltran AS, et al. Inheritance of OCT4 predetermines fate choice in human embryonic stem cells. Mol Syst Biol. 2018;14: e8140. doi: 10.15252/msb.20178140 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 5.Imayoshi I, Isomura A, Harima Y, Kawaguchi K, Kori H, Miyachi H, et al. Oscillatory control of factors determining multipotency and fate in mouse neural progenitors. Science. 2013;342: 1203–1208. doi: 10.1126/science.1242366 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 6.Bintu L, Yong J, Antebi YE, McCue K, Kazuki Y, Uno N, et al. Dynamics of epigenetic regulation at the single-cell level. Science. 2016;351: 720–724. doi: 10.1126/science.aab2956 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 7.Heinz KS, Rapp A, Casas-Delucchi CS, Lehmkuhl A, Romero-Fernández I, Sánchez A, et al. DNA replication dynamics of vole genome and its epigenetic regulation. Epigenetics Chromatin. 2019;12: 18. doi: 10.1186/s13072-019-0262-0 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 8.Jiang Y, AkhavanAghdam Z, Tsimring LS, Hao N. Coupled feedback loops control the stimulus-dependent dynamics of the yeast transcription factor Msn2. J Biol Chem. 2017;292: 12366–12372. doi: 10.1074/jbc.C117.800896 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 9.Levine JH, Lin Y, Elowitz MB. Functional roles of pulsing in genetic circuits. Science. 2013;342: 1193–1200. doi: 10.1126/science.1239999 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 10.Yissachar N, Sharar Fischler T, Cohen AA, Reich-Zeliger S, Russ D, Shifrut E, et al. Dynamic response diversity of NFAT isoforms in individual living cells. Mol Cell. 2013;49: 322–330. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2012.11.003 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 11.Locke JCW, Young JW, Fontes M, Hernández Jiménez MJ, Elowitz MB. Stochastic pulse regulation in bacterial stress response. Science. 2011;334: 366–369. doi: 10.1126/science.1208144 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 12.Evseenko D, Zhu Y, Schenke-Layland K, Kuo J, Latour B, Ge S, et al. Mapping the first stages of mesoderm commitment during differentiation of human embryonic stem cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010;107: 13742–13747. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1002077107 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 13.Cosette J, Moussy A, Onodi F, Auffret-Cariou A, Neildez-Nguyen TMA, Paldi A, et al. Single Cell Dynamics Causes Pareto-Like Effect in Stimulated T Cell Populations. Sci Rep. 2015;5: 17756. doi: 10.1038/srep17756 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 14.Tang DG. Understanding cancer stem cell heterogeneity and plasticity. Cell Res. 2012;22: 457–472. doi: 10.1038/cr.2012.13 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 15.Yang S, Cho Y, Jang J. Single cell heterogeneity in human pluripotent stem cells. BMB Rep. 2021;54: 505–515. doi: 10.5483/BMBRep.2021.54.10.094 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 16.Canham MA, Sharov AA, Ko MSH, Brickman JM. Functional heterogeneity of embryonic stem cells revealed through translational amplification of an early endodermal transcript. PLoS Biol. 2010;8: e1000379. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000379 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 17.Han C, Yang C. Viral plaque analysis on a wide field-of-view, time-lapse, on-chip imaging platform. Analyst. 2014;139: 3727–3734. doi: 10.1039/c3an02323k [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 18.Han C, Pang S, Bower DV, Yiu P, Yang C. Wide field-of-view on-chip Talbot fluorescence microscopy for longitudinal cell culture monitoring from within the incubator. Anal Chem. 2013;85: 2356–2360. doi: 10.1021/ac303356v [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 19.Balzer EM, Tong Z, Paul CD, Hung W-C, Stroka KM, Boggs AE, et al. Physical confinement alters tumor cell adhesion and migration phenotypes. FASEB J. 2012;26: 4045–4056. doi: 10.1096/fj.12-211441 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 20.Lu Y-C, Chu T, Hall MS, Fu D-J, Shi Q, Chiu A, et al. Physical confinement induces malignant transformation in mammary epithelial cells. Biomaterials. 2019;217: 119307. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2019.119307 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 21.Warmflash A, Sorre B, Etoc F, Siggia ED, Brivanlou AH. A method to recapitulate early embryonic spatial patterning in human embryonic stem cells. Nat Methods. 2014;11: 847–854. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.3016 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 22.Hughes MA, Brennan PM, Bunting AS, Shipston MJ, Murray AF. Cell patterning on photolithographically defined parylene-C: SiO2 substrates. J Vis Exp. 2014. doi: 10.3791/50929 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 23.Fruncillo S, Su X, Liu H, Wong LS. Lithographic Processes for the Scalable Fabrication of Micro- and Nanostructures for Biochips and Biosensors. ACS Sens. 2021;6: 2002–2024. doi: 10.1021/acssensors.0c02704 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 24.Chen W, Lam RHW, Fu J. Photolithographic surface micromachining of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Lab Chip. 2012;12: 391–395. doi: 10.1039/c1lc20721k [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 25.Fourkas JT. Nanoscale photolithography with visible light. J Phys Chem Lett. 2010;1: 1221–1227. [Google Scholar]
  • 26.Fehling HJ, Lacaud G, Kubo A, Kennedy M, Robertson S, Keller G, et al. Tracking mesoderm induction and its specification to the hemangioblast during embryonic stem cell differentiation. Development. 2003;130: 4217–4227. doi: 10.1242/dev.00589 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 27.Smith AG. Embryo-derived stem cells: of mice and men. Annu Rev Cell Dev Biol. 2001;17: 435–462. doi: 10.1146/annurev.cellbio.17.1.435 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 28.Singer ZS, Yong J, Tischler J, Hackett JA, Altinok A, Surani MA, et al. Dynamic heterogeneity and DNA methylation in embryonic stem cells. Mol Cell. 2014;55: 319–331. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2014.06.029 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 29.Hui EE, Bhatia SN. Silicon microchips for manipulating cell-cell interaction. J Vis Exp. 2007; 268. doi: 10.3791/268 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 30.Nandagopal N, Santat LA, Elowitz MB. Cis-activation in the Notch signaling pathway. eLife. 2019. doi: 10.7554/eLife.37880 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 31.Gillespie DT. Stochastic simulation of chemical kinetics. Annu Rev Phys Chem. 2007;58: 35–55. doi: 10.1146/annurev.physchem.58.032806.104637 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 32.Park S, Kim H, Wang Y, Eom DS, Allard J. Zebrafish airinemes optimize their shape between ballistic and diffusive search. Elife. 2022;11. doi: 10.7554/eLife.75690 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 33.Metzler R, Oshanin G, Redner S. First-passage phenomena and their applications. Metzler R, Gleb O, Redner S, editors. Singapore, Singapore: World Scientific Publishing; 2014. [Google Scholar]
  • 34.Holle AW, Chao S-H, Holl MR, Houkal JM, Meldrum DR. Characterization of program controlled CO 2 laser-cut PDMS channels for lab-on-a-chip applications. 2007 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering. IEEE; 2007. pp. 621–627.
  • 35.Deng T, Wu H, Brittain ST, Whitesides GM. Prototyping of masks, masters, and stamps/molds for soft lithography using an office printer and photographic reduction. Anal Chem. 2000;72: 3176–3180. doi: 10.1021/ac991343m [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 36.Hormoz S, Singer ZS, Linton JM, Antebi YE, Shraiman BI, Elowitz MB. Inferring Cell-State Transition Dynamics from Lineage Trees and Endpoint Single-Cell Measurements. Cell Syst. 2016;3: 419-433.e8. doi: 10.1016/j.cels.2016.10.015 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  • 37.Kumar RM, Cahan P, Shalek AK, Satija R, DaleyKeyser A, Li H, et al. Deconstructing transcriptional heterogeneity in pluripotent stem cells. Nature. 2014;516: 56–61. doi: 10.1038/nature13920 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Decision Letter 0

Kun Chen

28 Jun 2022

PONE-D-22-12330Cost-efficient boundary-free surface patterning achieves high effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experimentsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Ding,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

I recommend you to add more (control) experiments to demonstrate the advantages of your method over existing ones. Different cell lines may be helpful.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 12 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

  • A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.

  • A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.

  • An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Kun Chen, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf

2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure:

“The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

At this time, please address the following queries:

a)        Please clarify the sources of funding (financial or material support) for your study. List the grants or organizations that supported your study, including funding received from your institution.

b)        State what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role in your study, please state: “The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

c)        If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.

d)        If you did not receive any funding for this study, please state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In this work, Liang et al. developed one simple method for high-throughput of time-lapse live cell experimental studies. In this method, the cells will be confined to high-adhesive zones through a cheap and boundary-free surface patterning protocol. This simple and cost-efficient method solved the cell-losing problem during time lapse microscopy movies and improved the effective-throughput experiments. Furthermore, the authors demonstrated that the ESC cell maintained their phenotype in a 4-day long experiment. Overall, this is a timely piece of study for live cell imagining studies, as cell loss is a big problem for long-time experiments. Here is are some comments:

1. Is it easier to do a simple experiment for the no-pattern situation and calculate the lineage recording rate?

2. The authors need to detail the imaging analysis for lineage tracking.

3. The authors need to detail the simulation method for estimating the lineage recording rate in Fig.

4. Fig. 3, why does the image on day 3 have a much brighter background than the others?

Reviewer #2: In this manuscript, Liang et al. describe a method that restricts cell migration to pre-defined boundary-free areas via differential cell-ECM affinities. The authors claim that this method is low-cost and that it significantly improves the throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments by preventing cells from migrating out of the fields of view. The major caveat of this manuscript is that the authors do not provide sufficient benchmarks to demonstrate the advantages of their methods over the state-of-the-arts. Therefore, it remains difficult to evaluate whether their method provides a meaningful contribution to the community. Specifically, the authors should answer the following questions.

1. Does laminin and BSA coating alter cell phenotypes?

Factors such as ECM stiffnesses, local cell density, and the geometry of the culturing environment are known to regulate cell phenotypes. Therefore, a central task is to demonstrate that the coating does not significantly alter the cell phenotypes. While the authors demonstrated that the brachyury signals in ESCs on Day 4 matched the previous studies, this only reflects one aspect of cell phenotype in a highly specific experimental condition. The authors could perform parallel experiments in coated and uncoated plates and examine whether cell proliferation (e.g., quantify the intermitotic times by time-lapse microscopy or stain pRb S807/811 by IF) and the expression levels of stem-cell marker genes (by IF) are consistent. The authors should also consider comparing cells in the high-affinity areas, the low-affinity areas, and the transitory areas to demonstrate that the abrupt change in the cell-ECM affinity does not alter the cell phenotypes. Finally, benchmarking on other cell lines, such as cancer cells where ECM stiffnesses are known to regulate their therapeutic responses, will be useful. While it is understandable that no methodology is perfect, demonstrating the scope of applicability is necessary.

2. Does this method provide similar performance to other state-of-the-art methods, such as photolithography, despite being cheaper?

The authors could perform similar benchmarks described above in laminin/BSA-coated plates and photolithography-modified plates.

3. Does this method allow one to track more cells throughout the imaging period?

In addition to the cells migrating out of the fields of view, the throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments is governed by the accuracy of automatic cell tracking. As cells become more crowded with this method, the accuracy of segmentation (detecting cell nuclei) and track linking (mapping cell nuclei between images and detecting mitosis, etc) could decrease. It is thus necessary to track the cells cultured in coated and uncoated plates with standard automatic cell-tracking algorithms and examine the number of cells tracked throughout the imaging period and the accuracy of tracked cell lineages. If this method is only aimed at manual cell tracking, it should be clearly described.

Minor Comments

1. The authors provide many technical details in the “Results and Discussion” section, such that it becomes too wordy. The authors could consider summarizing their findings in the main text and additionally providing a protocol with these technical details in the supplementary materials.

2. The authors should proofread their manuscripts to match the publication standard. For example, “250um” should be “250 μm” (notice the space between the number and the unit), and in the text “For the 35cm glass-bottom dish”, “35cm” should be “35 mm.”

3 (Optional). The authors used a simple numeric simulation to demonstrate the improvement of the experimental throughputs. While it is effective, the authors could easily make the simulation more realistic, such as by simulating the cell division with the Gillespie algorithm. Alternatively, the authors could formulate their problem by calculating the first-passage time of an unbiased random walk, for which the closed-form solution exists.

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Chengzhe Tian

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Decision Letter 1

Kun Chen

26 Sep 2022

Cost-efficient boundary-free surface patterning achieves high effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments

PONE-D-22-12330R1

Dear Dr. Ding,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

I recommend you to consider the minor comments about the language of the manuscript from one of our reviewer before the final publication.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Kun Chen, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thanks the authors for the comprehensive and thoughtful responses. The authors have adequately addressed all my comments. I congratulate them on this great work!

Reviewer #2: The authors have significantly improved the manuscript according to the comments. Scientifically, I believe that this manuscript has reached the publication standard of PLoS ONE. However, since PLoS ONE does not provide copyediting, the authors should consider further improving the language of the manuscript to attract greater audience, and letting a native speaker proofread the manuscript could help. Therefore, I suggest a decision of either acceptance or minor revision (specifically for the language).

For example, the second sentence of the Abstract looks weird. Since the proposed method does not address the "laborious" part, mentioning this in the abstract is not necessary. The structure could be: the first part introduces the definition of the cell-losing problem (the content in the parenthesis), and the second part describes the consequences: very few cells tracked in long-term recordings.

The first paragraph of "Results and Discussion" still sounds too wordy. For example, the sentence "Moreover, once fabricated, the PDMS stencil is reusable..." could be a single short sentence without parenthesis.

Additionally, some numbers and units are still incorrect. Some numbers and units are still incorrect. For example, in "Analysis of colony movement", "15um" should be "15 μm." There are at least 10 such instances in the manuscript.

Finally, the authors could mention that another caveat of the PDMS-based physical confinement approach: PDMS will absorb small hydrophobic molecules (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsob.160156), such that it could not be used in many biological research fields (e.g., cell cycle).

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Chengzhe Tian

**********

Acceptance letter

Kun Chen

18 Oct 2022

PONE-D-22-12330R1

Cost-efficient boundary-free surface patterning achieves high effective-throughput of time-lapse microscopy experiments

Dear Dr. Ding:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Kun Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

    This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

    Supplementary Materials

    S1 Movie. A movie showing how laser cutting machine penetrates the PDMS stencils using the raster scan mode.

    (MOV)

    S2 Movie. A movie showing how laser cutting machine outlines the PDMS stencils using the vector mode.

    (MP4)

    S3 Movie. A typical 4-days time-lapse movie with the patterned system.

    We have found that cells preferred growing in the high-adhesive zone (circled). As the pattern is boundary-free, cells can expand out once the confined area was filled (at around 90 hr in the movie).

    (AVI)

    S4 Movie. A typical time-lapse movie without any patterned system.

    We can barely catch a single entire lineage colony. In the shown move, we lose the colony within 2 days.

    (AVI)

    S5 Movie. A simulation of colony growth with the synchronized cell cycle model.

    (MP4)

    Attachment

    Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

    Data Availability Statement

    All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.


    Articles from PLOS ONE are provided here courtesy of PLOS

    RESOURCES