Design and Development of an Automatic Microinjection System for High-Throughput Injection of Zebrafish Larvae

Abstract

The microinjection of zebrafish larvae is a complicated work due to their small size and shape variations. In this article, for the first time, we design an automatic microinjection system dedicated to high-throughput injection of zebrafish larvae. The proposed custom-built microarray Petri dish combined with machine vision-based motion control enables high-efficiency automatic identification and injection of a batch of zebrafish larvae. The feasibility of the developed system is demonstrated by experimental testing on live zebrafish larvae. Results show that the developed system works fast with more stable injection success rate and higher survival rate than the skilled experimenter. The proposed system offers a good working efficiency and maintains a consistent success rate and stability in the process of high-throughput injection. It can be applied in various biomedical experiments based on zebrafish microinjection. Note to Practitioners—Zebrafish is widely used in biomedical experiments due to its obvious advantages. At present, the batch injection task of larvae is mainly conducted by experimenters manually. As the number of injections increases, experimenters will get tired, which makes it difficult for manual injection to maintain a stable success rate. This article reports the first automatic microinjection system for high-throughput batch injection of zebrafish larvae. A new microarray Petri dish has been proposed to fix the larvae, facilitating the microinjection process. Experimental results show that the system can complete a large number of injection tasks quickly while ensuring a stable success rate and survival rate of the larvae. It can free experimenters from repeated and tedious injection work. It also enables efficient zebrafish larvae microinjection for inexperienced experimenters.