Caenorhabditis elegans has emerged as a model organism for aging research. Large-scale screens for longevity genes in C. elegans use liquid culture combined with drug-induced blocking of progeny, introducing physiological stress on the animals. Small-scale pilot screens adopt agar-based methods, which necessitates the tedious task of repetitively picking and transferring animals. In both approaches, it is practically impossible to add reagents or remove reagents (e.g., food or drugs) at multiple time points during the lifespan precluding detailed aging investigations. Finally, most screens do not score animals for multidimensional readouts of healthspan.We report a simple and high-throughput microfluidic platform addressing the limitations of current methods. The platform is capable of measuring lifespan and healthspan of wild type and mutants in parallel without a requirement for drug blocking of progeny production. Numerous trials have shown that we can remove progeny efficiently while retaining the adult animals in the device. To reduce physiological stress on the animals, we have optimized device geometry and feeding protocols such that the gait, body size, and lifespan are consistent with aging assays on agar. In addition to standard healthspan readouts such as locomotory prowess and pharyngeal pumping, the device allows recording of novel measures such as animal muscle strength and agility.We test the multifunctional capabilities of the device by conducting a pilot screen that includes wild-type,
daf-2,
daf-16,
age-1 and
eat-2 animals. We find that the lifespan curves of the wild-type and genetic mutants are consistent with the literature reports. We also show that in a targeted RNAi screen, the lifespan curves obtained were consistent with those of the genetic mutants. Analysis of muscle strength, agility, and locomotory prowess as a function of lifespan in the long-lived mutants reveal new insights into sarcopenia. In summary, we anticipate that the simplicity of our method, combined with unprecedented capacity to temporally manipulate the environment of the animals and record multidimensional healthspan measures will enable highly parallelized cross-sectional and longitudinal aging experiments.