Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a faster, easier way to create microelectrodes, for use in microfluidic devices, by using liquid metal.
Read the full article by Ju-Hee So and Michael Dickey in the latest issue of Lab on a Chip here.
And why not check out some of the other articles in the same issue?
View the new videos on the Lab on a Chip YouTube site using the links below:
Magnetically-actuated artificial cilia for microfluidic propulsion
Separation of parasites from human blood using deterministic lateral displacement
The chip consists of a printed integrated circuit and a microfluidic device, powered wirelessly by a palm sized RFID reader
A team of US scientists has developed the first lab on a chip device to be powered remotely.
Wen Qiao at the University of California, San Diego, made a microfluidic chip that can be powered with a commercially available radio frequency transmitter for electrophoresis experiments.
Qiao’s team made the chip by printing a circuit onto a plastic sheet. Within the circuit, they placed a chamber containing microwells.
The device is cheap to produce and simple to use and can be used in the same way as a microscope slide, with the RFID transmitter mounted next to a microscope stage and a camera to capture images of the moving nanoparticles. Qiao says that the chip will ‘greatly simplify the operation of the device for pathologists and clinicians whose training and practices have been mostly on optical microscopes, with limited experience with sophisticated electronic instruments.’
Check out the full Chemistry World story online here or read the Lab on a Chip article:
Wirelessly powered microfluidic dielectrophoresis devices using printable RF circuits
Wen Qiao, Gyoujin Cho and Yu-Hwa Lo
Lab Chip, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/c0lc00457j
The issue includes an excellent range of articles from fundamental studies to developments in biology-inspired physics and micro/nanotechnologies. Contributors to the issue include Charles Baroud, Stephanie Descroix, Anne-Marie Haghiri-Gosnet, Benoit Ladoux, Emmanuel Mignard, Patrick Tabeling and Jean-Louis Viovy.
Jean-Louis Viovy was our Guest Editor for the issue, read his thoughts on the progress of microfluidics in France in his editorial here, view the great content online here and let us know what you think!
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Scientists in Japan have developed a portable influenza testing kit with better accuracy than current methods, which can give a result in 30 minutes.
Scientists from the Tokyo Medical and Dental University and Sony Corporation made a nucleic acid amplification testing (NAT) device that not only gives information on the sample’s genetic make up to identify the flu pathogen type, but is also more than 90 per cent accurate. The device works by detecting the genes of the influenza virus pathogen – an organism that causes the disease – which gives information about the virus subtype and drug resistance.
Current rapid diagnostic kits to detect the flu virus suffer from low accuracy (40-69 per cent) and don’t provide genetic information about the sample. One NAT in use to test clinical specimens is real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, which involves amplifying, detecting and quantifying DNA sequences. It does give genetic information, but it consists of a complex procedure and takes 3-4 hours to produce results.
Sony’s detection system comprises: a laptop to control the system; a device for heating samples and detecting fluorescence; and disposable testing chips. The chips contain reaction wells made of polydimethylsiloxane sandwiched between two glass sheets in a vacuum chamber. Samples are injected into the wells through a port by a disposable injector, eliminating the need for pumps and tubing.
The detection system comprises: a laptop to control the system; a device for heating samples and detecting fluorescence; and disposable testing chips
Read the full article here
Link to journal article
Point-of-care testing system enabling 30 min detection of influenza genes
Tomoteru Abe, Yuji Segawa, Hidetoshi Watanabe, Tasuku Yotoriyama, Shinichi Kai, Akio Yasuda, Norio Shimizu and Naoko Tojo,
Lab Chip, 2011, DOI: 10.1039/c0lc00519c
View the new videos on the Lab on a Chip YouTube site using the links below:
3-Dimensional cell culture for on-chip differentiation of stem cells in embryoid body
A microfluidic chip that can come up with a DNA profile in less than three hours has been designed by US scientists for use at crime scenes.
With current techniques, forensic scientists have to wait up to eight hours to get results. Using microchips to speed up the process has been investigated but integrating all of the profiling steps in one device has remained elusive until now. Richard Mathies from the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues, in collaboration with the US Department of Justice, have produced a portable method to test DNA at a crime scene that integrates all of the steps in one device.
Andy Hopwood, an expert in DNA analysis techniques from the UK’s Forensic Science Service, believes that the work is ‘without a doubt a very exciting and significant development toward the total integration of the DNA-based human identification process onto a single microchip’.
Read Holly Sheahan’s Chemistry World article online here or go straight to the HOT Lab on a Chip paper:
Integrated DNA purification, PCR, sample cleanup, and capillary electrophoresis microchip for forensic human identification
Peng Liu, Xiujun Li, Susan A. Greenspoon, James R. Scherer and Richard A. Mathies
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, 1041
DOI: 10.1039/c0lc00533a
Want your bacteria identified – wait one second!
A team from the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena have designed a SERS microfluidic system for swiftly analysing large sample sets of bacteria. Jürgen Popp and co-workers have combined the benefits that a lab-on-a-chip provides – a well defined detection area – with the sensitivities of SERS for fast, reproducible spectra every time. Their novel sample technique, which involves sonicating the bacteria to break down the cell walls, avoids previous problems with spectral fluctuations and sample inhomogeneity.
Read how they did it here – the article is free to access until the end of February!
Towards a fast, high specific and reliable discrimination of bacteria on strain level by means of SERS in a microfluidic device
Angela Walter, Anne März, Wilm Schumacher, Petra Rösch and Jürgen Popp
Lab Chip, 2011, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0LC00536C, Paper
Chinese scientists have developed a much easier way to make the short strands of RNA that are an essential tool in understanding what genes do.
Short interfering ribonucleic acids (siRNAs) were first discovered in 1999, and found to interfere with the expression of specific genes, giving them a key role in controlling the molecular machinery in living organisms. Though initially identified in plants, they were later found in animals too, and this spurred an interest in using them as tools to investigate what specific genes do in the body.
One type of siRNAs, endoribonuclease-prepared siRNAs (esiRNAs), has recently attracted attention because of their greater specificity and their cost effectiveness. Jianzhong Xi and colleagues at Peking University have now demonstrated a lab on a chip method that makes large scale manufacture of esiRNAs much easier.
The chip consists of 96 pins. Each pin has a polymer bead at its end in which a number of DNA probes are immobilised, allowing hundreds of esiRNA products to be manipulated at the same time.
Read Catherine Bacon’s Chemistry World article online here or go straight to the HOT Lab on a Chip paper:
A polyacrylamide microbead-integrated chip for the large-scale manufacture of ready-to-use esiRNA
Huang Huang, Qing Chang, Changhong Sun, Shenyi Yin, Juan Li and Jianzhong Jeff Xi
Lab Chip, 2011, 11, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C0LC00564A
