Department of Biochemical Engineering, University College London, Torrington Place, London, WC1E 7JE, United Kingdom.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2010 Aug;21(4):517-23. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2010.08.002. Epub 2010 Sep 9.
Microfluidic systems miniaturise biological experimentation leading to reduced sample volume, analysis time and cost. Recent innovations have allowed the application of -omics approaches on the microfluidic scale. It is now possible to perform 1.5 million PCR reactions simultaneously, obtain transcriptomic data from as little as 150 cells (as few as 2 transcripts per gene of interest) and perform mass-spectrometric analyses online. For synthetic biology, unit operations have been developed that allow de novo construction of synthetic systems from oligonucleotide synthesis through to high-throughput, high efficiency electroporation of single cells or encapsulation into abiotic chassis enabling the processing of thousands of synthetic organisms per hour. Future directions include a push towards integrating more processes into a single device and replacing off-chip analyses where possible.
微流控系统使生物实验小型化，从而减少了样品量、分析时间和成本。最近的创新使得在微流控尺度上应用组学方法成为可能。现在可以同时进行 150 万次 PCR 反应，从少至 150 个细胞（每个感兴趣的基因少至 2 个转录本）中获得转录组数据，并在线进行质谱分析。对于合成生物学，已经开发出单元操作，允许通过寡核苷酸合成从头构建合成系统，直至对单细胞进行高通量、高效率的电穿孔或封装到非生物底盘中，从而使每小时处理数千个合成生物成为可能。未来的方向包括推动将更多的过程集成到单个设备中，并尽可能替代芯片外分析。
