RESUMO
Single cell analysis circumvents the need to average data from large populations by observing each cell individually, thus enabling the analysis of cell-to-cell variability. The ability to work on this scale presents many new opportunities for the life sciences and biomedical applications. Microfluidics has become a tool of choice for such studies and electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) technology is well adapted for samples with reduced size and biological studies at the single cell level. In the present manuscript, for the first time, we present an integrated and automated system based on EWOD that can process the complete workflow on a single device, from the isolation of a single cell to mRNA purification and gene expression analysis.
Assuntos
Separação Celular/instrumentação , Eletroumectação/instrumentação , Técnicas Analíticas Microfluídicas/instrumentação , Reação em Cadeia da Polimerase Multiplex/instrumentação , RNA Mensageiro/análise , RNA Mensageiro/isolamento & purificação , Linhagem Celular , Desenho de Equipamento , HumanosRESUMO
Promising microfluidic devices are proposed herein to continuously and passively extract plasma from whole human blood. These designs are based on the red cells lateral migration and the resulting cell-free layer locally expanded by geometric singularities, such as an abrupt enlargement of the channel or a cavity adjacent to the channel. After an explanation of flow patterns, devices are experimentally and biologically validated for plasma extraction. They are also successively optimized with extraction yields up to 17.8% for a 1:20 blood injected at 100 microL/min.