School of Integrative Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, 06974, Republic of Korea.
PCL Inc, Seoul, 08510, Republic of Korea.
Mikrochim Acta. 2022 Aug 15;189(9):331. doi: 10.1007/s00604-022-05439-7.
Flow cytometry has become an indispensable tool for counting, analyzing, and sorting large cell populations in biological research and medical practice. Unfortunately, it has limitations in the analysis of non-spherically shaped cells due to the variation of their alignment with respect to the flow direction and, hence, the optical interrogation axis, resulting in unreliable cell analysis. Here, we present a simple on-chip acoustofluidic method to fix the orientation of ellipsoidal cells and focus them into a single, aligned stream. Specifically, by generating acoustic standing waves inside a 100 ⋅ 100 µm square-shaped microchannel, we successfully aligned and focused up to 97.7% of a population of Euglena gracilis (an ellipsoidal shaped microalgal species) cells in the center of the microchannel with high precision at a volume rate of 25 to 200 µL min. Uniform positioning of ellipsoidal cells is essential for making flow cytometry applicable to the investigation of a greater variety of cell populations and is expected to be beneficial for ecological studies and aquaculture.
流式细胞术已成为生物研究和医学实践中计数、分析和分选大量细胞群体的不可或缺的工具。然而，由于细胞相对于流动方向和光学检测轴的排列变化，它在分析非球形细胞时存在局限性，导致细胞分析不可靠。在这里，我们提出了一种简单的片上声流控方法，以固定椭圆形细胞的方向，并将它们聚焦成单一的、对齐的流。具体来说，通过在 100 ⋅ 100 μm 方形微通道内产生声驻波，我们成功地将高达 97.7%的 Euglena gracilis（一种椭圆形微藻物种）细胞在微通道的中心以高精度排列和聚焦，体积率为 25 至 200 μL min。椭圆形细胞的均匀定位对于使流式细胞术适用于更广泛的细胞群体的研究至关重要，预计这将有益于生态研究和水产养殖。
