Difference between revisions of "Team:Uppsala/Project/Microfluidics"

Why microfluidics?

There are two essential qualities in microfluidic devices that make them attractive to life science research. Firstly, the size of the device is small which makes them ideal platforms for point-of-care diagnostics that are portable. Secondly, their small size is also convenient since the volume of the liquids required to perform complex experiments is minimal, a property that can lower the cost of reactions. Thanks to fluidic components that approach the scale of a single cell, microfluidics in cell biology increases the throughput of biological and chemical assays. Small fluidic devices can perform a wide range of experimental designs and are also able to executed fully automated computer protocols. This reduces the human error and makes experiments highly efficient and reproducible. The advantages that this field brings to life science research are proof that microfluidics shows broad potential use in medicine as well. In our project, we are using microfluidic techniques to transform bacterial and yeast cells in an efficient and more automated manner.

What we have been up to

We are in the process of making a microfluidic device that will be used for cell transformation. Hitherto, we have been able to 3D print a couple of designs and discuss our final design. After we 3D print a mold that is satisfactory, we will bake PDMS on it and can later begin to test our chip. During our first trials we would like to keep things simple in order to make troubleshooting as painless of a process as possible. Therefore, we have decided to start off with the heat shock method of transformation. Our initial thoughts are to have a channel on the chip running with cells and plasmids and a parallel channel with temperature regulated water. With this technique we hope to be able to expose CaCl2 competent cells to a heat shock preceded and followed by low temperatures; much like a conventional heat shock. Moreover we are in the process of calculating the cost for an ordinary heat shock. The reason for this being that one of our main goals is to make cell transformation more affordable.

Plans for electroporation

One of our final goals is to produce a chip that enables electroporation. The best way to perform electroporation on a chip (as read in literature) is to use droplet techniques. That is, droplets of cell growth medium and cells separated by nonconductive material. The most common nonconductive material used is fluorinated oil. These oils are generally expensive, hard to find and may be toxic. For this reason we are considering separating droplets with gas; more precisely N2.

Next week, we hope to bake our chip and start running experiments with it.