Abstract
Although the elementary unit of biology is the cell, high-throughput methods for the microscale manipulation of cells and reagents are limited. The existing options either are slow, lack single-cell specificity, or use fluid volumes out of scale with those of cells. Here we present printed droplet microfluidics, a technology to dispense picoliter droplets and cells with deterministic control. The core technology is a fluorescence-activated droplet sorter coupled to a specialized substrate that together act as a picoliter droplet and single-cell printer, enabling high-throughput generation of intricate arrays of droplets, cells, and microparticles. Printed droplet microfluidics provides a programmable and robust technology to construct arrays of defined cell and reagent combinations and to integrate multiple measurement modalities together in a single assay.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 8728-8733 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 114 |
Issue number | 33 |
Early online date | 31 Jul 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 15 Aug 2017 |
Keywords
- single-cell analysis
- droplet microfluidics
- fluorescence-activated droplet sorting
- cell printing
- droplet array