Journal
BIOMEDICAL MICRODEVICES
Volume 15, Issue 3, Pages 553-560Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10544-013-9754-z
Keywords
Microfluidic chip; Droplet; Flow focusing; Fluorescence-activated droplet sorting; Encapsulation; HeLa cell
Funding
- National Basic Research Program of China [2011CB910403]
- National High Technology Research and Development Program of China [2011AA02A103]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [31070770]
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Encapsulation of single cells is a challenging task in droplet microfluidics due to the random compartmentalization of cells dictated by Poisson statistics. In this paper, a microfluidic device was developed to improve the single-cell encapsulation rate by integrating droplet generation with fluorescence-activated droplet sorting. After cells were loaded into aqueous droplets by hydrodynamic focusing, an on-flight fluorescence-activated sorting process was conducted to isolate droplets containing one cell. Encapsulation of fluorescent polystyrene beads was investigated to evaluate the developed method. A single-bead encapsulation rate of more than 98 % was achieved under the optimized conditions. Application to encapsulate single HeLa cells was further demonstrated with a single-cell encapsulation rate of 94.1 %, which is about 200 % higher than those obtained by random compartmentalization. We expect this new method to provide a useful platform for encapsulating single cells, facilitating the development of high-throughput cell-based assays.
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