Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Micro- and Nano-Fluidics Laboratory, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 32000, Israel.
Technion Integrated Cancer Center, The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, 3525433, Israel.
Small. 2020 Jun;16(22):e1906682. doi: 10.1002/smll.201906682. Epub 2020 May 4.
Self-propelling micromotors are emerging as a promising microscale tool for single-cell analysis. The authors have recently shown that the field gradients necessary to manipulate matter via dielectrophoresis can be induced at the surface of a polarizable active ("self-propelling") metallo-dielectric Janus particle (JP) under an externally applied electric field, acting essentially as a mobile floating microelectrode. Here, the application of the mobile floating microelectrode to trap and transport cell organelles in a selective and releasable manner is successfully extended. This selectivity is driven by the different dielectrophoretic (DEP) potential wells on the JP surface that is controlled by the frequency of the electric field, along with the hydrodynamic shearing and size of the trapped organelles. Such selective and directed loading enables purification of targeted organelles of interest from a mixed biological sample while their dynamic release enables their harvesting for further analysis such as gene/RNA sequencing or proteomics. Moreover, the electro-deformation of the trapped nucleus is shown to be in correlation with the DEP force and hence, can act as a promising label-free biomechanical marker. Hence, the active carrier constitutes an important and novel ex vivo platform for manipulation and mechanical probing of subcellular components of potential for single cell analysis.
自推进微马达作为一种有前途的单细胞分析微尺度工具正在出现。作者最近表明，通过介电泳操纵物质所需的场梯度可以在外加电场作用下在可极化活性（“自推进”）金属电介质詹纳斯粒子（JP）的表面上感应，实质上作为一个移动的浮动微电极。在这里，成功地扩展了以选择性和可释放方式捕获和运输细胞细胞器的移动浮动微电极的应用。这种选择性是由 JP 表面上的不同介电泳（DEP）势阱驱动的，该势阱由电场的频率、捕获细胞器的流体动力剪切和大小控制。这种选择性和定向加载能够从混合生物样品中纯化靶向细胞器，而它们的动态释放则能够用于进一步分析，例如基因/RNA 测序或蛋白质组学。此外，所捕获的核的电变形被证明与 DEP 力相关，因此，可用作有前途的无标记生物力学标记。因此，活性载体构成了用于亚细胞成分的体外操作和机械探测的重要和新颖的平台，有望用于单细胞分析。
