Microfluidics

Soft Lithography has been pioneered in the past decade as a tool to manipulate cells under well controlled physical and chemical conditions. Despite the vast number of studies applied in various lines of cells, there have been few focusing on the membrane properties of erythrocytes. Here we present a novel and convenient alternative to traditional methods used to obtain physical properties of erythrocytes, and our objective is to establish a standard model for healthy red blood cells and derive clear model for quantification of severity in erythrocyte membrane disorders, with...

We report on the current status of device fabrication of a monolithic, micro-machined device able to generate sub-micron diameter (femtoliter) fluidic droplets. Such droplet-on-demand (DoD) devices are important for a wide range of maskless lithography and rapid prototyping technologies, including direct-write patterning on non-standard, highly topographical, or extremely temperature sensitive substrates. Printable circuitry from DoD devices can be generated in non-clean room, extreme, or dynamic conditions. The basic design of these DoD devices places a pressure source at the bottom...

Single cell analysis is an important technology for biological and medical research. The precision of manipulating the location of the single cell (relative to the assay sites or other neighboring cells) is a necessary factor. We have previously demonstrated cell manipulation and separation with optoelectronic tweezers (OET), the goal of this project is to integrate this powerful tool with the micrifluidic devices to provide a complete solution for single cell electroporation.

Project end date: 07/30/08

The purpose of this study is to design, fabricate and optimize microfluidic mixers to investigate the kinetics of protein secondary structure formation with Synchrotron Radiation Circular Dichroism (SRCD) spectroscopy. SRCD allows us to use wavelengths below 220 nm where differences between the CD spectra of random coil and the various secondary structure types are most pronounced. Microfluidic mixing allows a fast initiation of the protein folding reaction. By combining this with SRCD, we can clarify an intense debate in the protein folding community as to when, in the process of...