Journal
ELECTROPHORESIS
Volume 42, Issue 11, Pages 1238-1246Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/elps.202000379
Keywords
Cells; Electrophoresis; Enrichment; Microfluidics; Thermal gel
Funding
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health [R21GM137278]
- Wayne State University
- Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity fellowship [NIH R25GM058905-22]
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This study presents a method to enrich cells within a microfluidic gel, utilizing thermal gels that can reversibly convert between liquid and solid phases. By controlling Joule heating to regulate the phase of the gel, cells can be enriched for downstream analyses with minimal dilution and degradation. This innovative approach offers a cost-effective solution for in-gel cell enrichment in microfluidic devices.
Gel electrophoresis is a ubiquitous bioanalytical technique used to characterize the components of cell lysates. However, analyses of bulk lysates sacrifice detection sensitivity because intracellular biomolecules become diluted, and the liberation of proteases and nucleases can degrade target analytes. This report describes a method to enrich cells directly within a microfluidic gel as a first step toward online measurement of trace intracellular biomolecules with minimal dilution and degradation. Thermal gels were employed as the gel matrix because they can be reversibly converted between liquid and solid phases as a function of temperature. Rather than fabricate costly heating elements into devices to control temperature-and thus the phase of the gel-Joule heating was used instead. Adjoining regions of liquid-phase and solid-phase gel were formed within microfluidic channels by selectively inducing localized Joule heat. Cells migrated through the liquid gel but could not enter the solid gel-accumulating at the liquid-solid gel boundary-whereas small molecule contaminants passed through to waste. Barriers were then liquified on-demand by removing Joule heat to collect the purified, non-lysed cells for downstream analyses. Using voltage-controlled Joule heating to regulate the phase of thermal gels is an innovative approach to facilitate in-gel cell enrichment in low-cost microfluidic devices.
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