Abstract

Droplet microfluidics has become a powerful tool in precision medicine, green biotechnology, and cell therapy for single-cell analysis and selection by virtue of its ability to effectively confine cells. However, there remains a fundamental trade-off between droplet volume and sorting throughput, limiting the advantages of droplet microfluidics to small droplets (<10 pl) that are incompatible with long-term maintenance and growth of most cells. We present a sequentially addressable dielectrophoretic array (SADA) sorter to overcome this problem. The SADA sorter uses an on-chip array of electrodes activated and deactivated in a sequence synchronized to the speed and position of a passing target droplet to deliver an accumulated dielectrophoretic force and gently pull it in the direction of sorting in a high-speed flow. We use it to demonstrate large-droplet sorting with ~20-fold higher throughputs than conventional techniques and apply it to long-term single-cell analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae based on their growth rate.

Paper

Title: Sequentially addressable dielectrophoretic array for high-throughput sorting of large-volume biological compartments
Publication: Science Advances
Author: Akihiro Isozaki*, Yuta Nakagawa, Mun Hong Loo, Yudai Shibata, Naoki Tanaka, Dwi Larasati Setyaningrum, Jee-Woong Park, Yoshitaka Shirasaki, Hideharu Mikami, Dunhou Huang, Hoilun Tsoi, Carson Tae Riche, Tadataka Ota, Hiromi Miwa, Yuko Kanda, Takuro Ito, Koji Yamada, Osamu Iwata, Kengo Suzuki, Shinsuke Ohnuki, Yoshikazu Ohya, Yuichi Kato, Tomohisa Hasunuma, Satoshi Matsusaka, Mai Yamagishi, Masayuki Yazawa, Sotaro Uemura, Kazumichi Nagasawa, Hiroshi Watarai, Dino Di Carlo, and Keisuke Goda*
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba6712
Date: 29 May 2020