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The ability to characterize dangerous bacteria and produce cells for bioproduction applications, as well as diagnose diseases and create better medicines, depend on the ability to examine the characteristics of individual cells. However, due to significant property variations across cells, even within the same cell population, as well as the presence of uncommon cell types within a larger population, the precise study of individual cells poses a difficulty, particularly when it comes to a cell’s biophysical properties.
In response to this need, Dr. Arum Han, a Texas Instruments Professor II in the Texas A&M University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his graduate students and postdoctoral researchers have created a new technology that can precisely analyze cell properties through the use of a single-cell electrorotation microfluidic device, which uses an electric field to probe the properties of the cell.
The method involves capturing a single cell with an electric field in a microfluidic device, spinning the cell while it is still trapped in the electric field, and measuring the rotational speed. Analyzing the rotation speed and the input electric field characteristics allow one to precisely analyze a single cell’s dielectric properties. We can extract several essential biophysical characteristics of the cell by knowing the applied force and the rate of cell rotation.
While there have been other attempts to accomplish this, this technique uses an 8-electrode pair to deliver a rotational torque to the trapped cell while also having the ability to generate high-frequency electric fields (up to 100 megahertz).