by Mona Shahsavari, Rienk Nieuwland, Ton G. van Leeuwen, Edwin van der Pol Introduction Microfluidic resistive pulse sensing (MRPS) can determine the concentration and size distribution of extracellular vesicles (EVs) by measuring the electrical resistance of single EVs passing through a pore. To ensure that the sample flows through the pore, the sample needs to contain a wetting agent, such as bovine serum albumin (BSA). BSA leaves EVs intact but occasionally results in unstable MRPS measurements. Here, we aim to find a new wetting agent by evaluating Poloxamer-188 and Tween-20. Methods An EV ..read more

by Gábor Szederkényi, Dorottya Kocsis, Mihály A. Vághy, Domonkos Czárán, Péter Sasvári, Miléna Lengyel, Márton Bese Naszlady, Fabiola Kreis, István Antal, Roland Csépányi-Kömi, Franciska Erdő Mathematical models of epidermal and dermal transport are essential for optimization and development of products for percutaneous delivery both for local and systemic indication and for evaluation of dermal exposure to chemicals for assessing their toxicity. These models often help directly by providing information on the rate of drug penetration through the skin and thus on the dermal or systemic concent ..read more

by Moshe Rubanov, Joshua Cole, Heon-Joon Lee, Leandro G. Soto Cordova, Zachary Chen, Elia Gonzalez, Rebecca Schulman DNA-functionalized hydrogels are capable of sensing oligonucleotides, proteins, and small molecules, and specific DNA sequences sensed in the hydrogels’ environment can induce changes in these hydrogels’ shape and fluorescence. Fabricating DNA-functionalized hydrogel architectures with multiple domains could make it possible to sense multiple molecules and undergo more complicated macroscopic changes, such as changing fluorescence or changing the shapes of regions of the hydroge ..read more

by Mariana De Niz, Emmanuel Frachon, Samy Gobaa, Philippe Bastin Trypanosoma brucei is the causative agent of African trypanosomiasis and is transmitted by the tsetse fly (Glossina spp.). All stages of this extracellular parasite possess a single flagellum that is attached to the cell body and confers a high degree of motility. While several stages are amenable to culture in vitro, longitudinal high-resolution imaging of free-swimming parasites has been challenging, mostly due to the rapid flagellar beating that constantly twists the cell body. Here, using microfabrication, we generated variou ..read more

by Arnav Solanki, Zak Griffin, Purab Ranjan Sutradhar, Karisha Pradhan, Caiden Merritt, Amlan Ganguly, Marc Riedel DNA has been discussed as a potential medium for data storage. Potentially it could be denser, could consume less energy, and could be more durable than conventional storage media such as hard drives, solid-state storage, and optical media. However, performing computations on the data stored in DNA is a largely unexplored challenge. This paper proposes an integrated circuit (IC) based on microfluidics that can perform complex operations such as artificial neural network (ANN) comp ..read more

by Philip L. Early, Niamh A. Kilcawley, Niamh A. McArdle, Marine Renou, Sinéad M. Kearney, Rohit Mishra, Nikolay Dimov, Macdara T. Glynn, Jens Ducrée, David J. Kinahan Due to their capability for comprehensive sample-to-answer automation, the interest in centrifugal microfluidic systems has greatly increased in industry and academia over the last quarter century. The main applications of these “Lab-on-a-Disc” (LoaD) platforms are in decentralised bioanalytical point-of-use / point-of-care testing. Due to the unidirectional and omnipresent nature of the centrifugal force, advanced flow control ..read more

by Julia Budassi, NaHyun Cho, Anthony Del Valle, Jonathan Sokolov We describe a method for fragmenting, in-situ, surface-adsorbed and immobilized DNAs on polymethylmethacrylate(PMMA)-coated silicon substrates using microfluidic delivery of the cutting enzyme DNase I. Soft lithography is used to produce silicone elastomer (Sylgard 184) gratings which form microfluidic channels for delivery of the enzyme. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) is used to reduce DNase I adsorption to the walls of the microchannels and enable diffusion of the cutting enzyme to a distance of 10mm. Due to the DNAs being immobil ..read more

by Hyun-Jin Kang, Sang-Hoon Lee, Han-Shin Kim, Yong Woo Jung, Hee-Deung Park Although detection of gram-negative bacteria (GNB) in body fluids is important for clinical purpose, traditional gram staining and other recently developed methods have inherent limitations in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, and convenience. To overcome the weakness, this study proposed a method detecting GNB based on specific binding of polymyxin B (PMB) to lipopolysaccharides (LPS) of GNB. Fluorescent microscopy demonstrated that surface immobilized PMB using a silane coupling agent was possible to detect fluorescen ..read more

by Mahmut Aslan Kamil, Camille Fourneaux, Alperen Yilmaz, Stavrakis Stavros, Romuald Parmentier, Andras Paldi, Sandrine Gonin-Giraud, Andrew J. deMello, Olivier Gandrillon Cell lineage tracking is a long-standing and unresolved problem in biology. Microfluidic technologies have the potential to address this problem, by virtue of their ability to manipulate and process single-cells in a rapid, controllable and efficient manner. Indeed, when coupled with traditional imaging approaches, microfluidic systems allow the experimentalist to follow single-cell divisions over time. Herein, we present a ..read more

by Vincent J. Lanier, Amanda M. White, Serge Faumont, Shawn R. Lockery The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a model organism widely used in basic, translational, and industrial research. C. elegans development is characterized by five morphologically distinct stages, including four larval stages and the adult stage. Stages differ in a variety of aspects including size, gene expression, physiology, and behavior. Enrichment for a particular developmental stage is often the first step in experimental design. When many hundreds of worms are required, the standard methods of enrichment are to gro ..read more