Square microchannel enables to focus and orient ellipsoidal Euglena gracilis cells by two-dimensional acoustic standing wave

Flow cytometry has become an indispensable tool for counting, analyzing, and sorting large cell populations in biological research and medical practice. Unfortunately, it has limitations in the analysis of non-spherically shaped cells due to the variation of their alignment with respect to the flow direction and, hence, the optical interrogation axis, resulting in unreliable cell analysis. Here, we present a simple on-chip acoustofluidic method to fix the orientation of ellipsoidal cells and focus them into a single, aligned stream. Specifically, by generating acoustic standing waves inside a 100 . 100 mu m square-shaped microchannel, we successfully aligned and focused up to 97.7% of a population of Euglena gracilis (an ellipsoidal shaped microalgal species) cells in the center of the microchannel with high precision at a volume rate of 25 to 200 mu L min(-1). Uniform positioning of ellipsoidal cells is essential for making flow cytometry applicable to the investigation of a greater variety of cell populations and is expected to be beneficial for ecological studies and aquaculture.

Automated summary

The article introduces a simple on-chip acoustofluidic method to align ellipsoidal cells and focus them into a single stream. By generating acoustic standing waves in a microchannel, the method successfully aligns and focuses a population of Euglena gracilis cells. This method is important for the application of flow cytometry.