By offering many significant methodological advantages, microfluidic techniques are reshaping the way axonal cell biology is studied in vitro. As compartmentalized microfluidic devices are based on geometric guidance of axon growth via engineered microgrooves, they provide a high level of control of connectivity and architecture of the neuronal network. This provides significant benefits for biochemical (e.g. isolation of axon-specific mRNA and protein species), cell biological (e.g. kinetic studies of axonal transport of vesicular and organelle cargo) and electrophysiological studies (e.g. recording the functional consequences of axon-specific manipulations) [5,16,25-27]. Specific chips using microfluidic isolation have been developed for production of large quantities of material for proteomic and RNA analyses of axonal composition [2].
