Wei Xiao-Yu, Li Jin-Hua, Wang Lei, Yang Fang
Key Laboratory for Molecular Enzymology and Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, China.
Changchun Experimental School of the Affiliated High School of Jilin University, Jilin University, Changchun, 130021, China.
Biomed Microdevices. 2019 Feb 21;21(1):22. doi: 10.1007/s10544-019-0369-x.
Cell lysis, where cellular material is released, is the basis for the separation and purification of cell contents, biochemical analysis, and other related experiments. It is also a key step in molecular, real-time, and cancer diagnoses as well as in the drug screening of pathogens. The current methods of lysing cells have several limitations, such as damage to the activity of cellular components, the need for a large number of cell samples, time-consuming processes, and the danger of high voltage. Therefore, a simple, fast, and efficient method for the manipulation of micro-volume cells or for single cell lysis is significant for further scientific research and practical application. In this study, a new low-voltage controllable method for cell lysis was established, and a corresponding microfluidic chip was developed. Simple, efficient and rapid micro-volume cells and single cell lysis were successfully achieved under a low-voltage alternating current with a voltage of 16 V and frequency of 10 kHz. The lysis process was investigated in detail by separately labelling the whole cell, cytoplasm, and nucleus using fluorescent proteins, which indicated that the whole cell was completely lysed. Analysis of voltage and frequency effects revealed that a higher voltage and optimized frequency enhanced the cell lysis efficiency. The presented study provides a new strategy for the lysis of micro-volume cells or a single cell, which is valuable for on-chip real-time diagnostics and point of care (POC) applications.
细胞裂解是指细胞内容物被释放出来的过程，它是分离和纯化细胞成分、进行生化分析及其他相关实验的基础。它也是分子诊断、实时诊断、癌症诊断以及病原体药物筛选中的关键步骤。目前的细胞裂解方法存在若干局限性，比如会损害细胞成分的活性、需要大量细胞样本、过程耗时以及存在高压危险。因此，一种用于处理微量细胞或单细胞裂解的简单、快速且高效的方法对于进一步的科学研究和实际应用具有重要意义。在本研究中，建立了一种新的低压可控细胞裂解方法，并开发了相应的微流控芯片。在16 V电压和10 kHz频率的低压交流电下，成功实现了简单、高效且快速的微量细胞和单细胞裂解。通过使用荧光蛋白分别标记整个细胞、细胞质和细胞核，对裂解过程进行了详细研究，结果表明整个细胞被完全裂解。对电压和频率效应的分析表明，较高的电压和优化的频率可提高细胞裂解效率。本研究为微量细胞或单细胞的裂解提供了一种新策略，这对于芯片上的实时诊断和即时护理（POC）应用具有重要价值。
