Protein dynamic analysis of the budding yeast sporulation process at the single-cell level in an air-enriched microfluidic device

The sporulation process of the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae involves morphological changes, which is a complex and interesting process in yeast biology. However, efficient methods to accurately study protein dynamic behaviors in the sporulation process are still lacking because the cell behaviors are quite heterogeneous. In this study, we proposed the use of an air-enriched microfluidic system to investigate protein dynamics during sporulation of the budding yeast S. cerevisiae within single cells. Our results verified that the air-enriched microenvironment was important for the yeast sporulation process in the microfluidic system. Furthermore, we found that the sporulation temporal stage of different cells varied immensely, indicating that single-cell analysis instead of statistical analysis of a population was necessary to verify the accuracy of protein dynamics. In addition, we developed a 'data synchronization' approach. This approach aligned each cell on a time line according to its own morphological changes. Using these methods, we obtained the dynamic performance of six proteins involved in the yeast sporulation process with single cells.