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Abstract We determined the macroscopic limit for phase synchronization of cellular clocks in an artificial tissue created by a “big chamber” microfluidic device to be about 150,000 cells or less. The dimensions of the microfluidic chamber allowed us to calculate an upper limit on the radius of a hypothesized quorum sensing signal molecule of 13.05 nm using a diffusion approximation for signal travel within the device. The use of a second microwell microfluidic device allowed the refinement of the macroscopic limit to a cell density of 2166 cells per fixed area of the device for phase synchronization. The measurement of averages over single cell trajectories in the microwell device supported a deterministic quorum sensing model identified by ensemble methods for clock phase synchronization. A strong inference framework was used to test the communication mechanism in phase synchronization of quorum sensing versus cell-to-cell contact, suggesting support for quorum sensing. Further evidence came from showing phase synchronization was density-dependent. 

Most eukaryotes and cyanobacterial species have a biological clock that allows adaptation to the daily light/dark cycle of the planet. A central problem in the study of the biological clock is understanding the synchro-nization of the stochastic oscillators in different cells and tissues, but this problem is largely unstudied, particularly in the context of circadian rhythms. We developed a novel microfluidic platform to make high-throughput and high-precision measurements of biological clocks on a controlled number of Neurospora crassa (N. crassa) cells. Single cell measurements in this platform enabled us to test whether clocks of individual cells are able to communicate. 

We report a microfluidic device that mimics an artificial tissue to test the theory of quorum sensing as a method for synchronization of a model fungal system, Neurospora crassa (N. crassa). High synchronicity between cells were observed by calculating the Kuramoto order parameter (K) between different fields of view.The dimensions of the microfluidic chamber allows us to also calculate an upper limit of the radius of a hypothesized quorum sensing signal by using the diffusion approximation for signal travelling within the device.