Moving single cells around -- accurately and cheaply Few technologies exist that allow researchers to withdraw single animal or bacterial cells from a tube or Petri dish, and those that do exist are cumbersome, expensive, and can be extremely time consuming to use. The prototype of Qins hSCP has two plungers (see figure). The first plunger withdraws fluid from a suspension of cells. Fluid travels through canals on either side of a nanoscopic, laser-sculpted hook that is just big enough to trap one cell. This hook can be altered depending on the size and type of cells a researcher is interested in. The first plunger is also used to wash and separate the captured cell from other cells that may have been extracted. The second plunger pushes the captured cell out of the pipette, possibly into growth medium, or onto a slide or welled plate for study. Preliminary test results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 11:37:49 +0000
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