Francesca Burgoyne – Lab on a Chip Blog

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Hot articles from our Emerging Investigators

20 Sep 2012

We’re delighted to announce the publication of our 2012 Emerging Investigators issue, which contains a massive 6 HOT articles! Read the editorial from Amy Herr and Aaron Wheeler to find out why this group of researchers is affectionately known as control freaks..

Controllable microfluidic production of gas-in-oil-in-water emulsions for hollow microspheres with thin polymer shells
Ran Chen, Peng-Fei Dong, Jian-Hong Xu, Yun-Dong Wang and Guang-Sheng Luo
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40387K

A rotary microsystem for simple, rapid and automatic RNA purification
Byung Hyun Park, Jae Hwan Jung, Hainan Zhang, Nae Yoon Lee and Tae Seok Seo
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40487G

Cytotoxicity analysis of water disinfection byproducts with a micro-pillar microfluidic device
Austin Hsiao, Yukako Komaki, Syed M. Imaad, Benito J. Mariñas, Michael J. Plewa and G. Logan Liu
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40374A

Highly sensitive and quantitative detection of rare pathogens through agarose droplet microfluidic emulsion PCR at the single-cell level
Zhi Zhu, Wenhua Zhang, Xuefei Leng, Mingxia Zhang, Zhichao Guan, Jiangquan Lu and Chaoyong James Yang
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40461C

Enantioselective analysis of melagatran via an LSPR biosensor integrated with a microfluidic chip
Longhua Guo, Yuechun Yin, Rong Huang, Bin Qiu, Zhenyu Lin, Huang-Hao Yang, Jianrong Li and Guonan Chen
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40388A

Real-time full-spectral imaging and affinity measurements from 50 microfluidic channels using nanohole surface plasmon resonance
Si Hoon Lee, Nathan C. Lindquist, Nathan J. Wittenberg, Luke R. Jordan and Sang-Hyun Oh
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40455A

These articles will be free to access for the next 4 weeks. (Free access to individuals is provided through an RSC Publishing personal account. Registration is quick, free and simple.)

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Free organs on chips articles

20 Sep 2012

To coincide with the Organs on Chips: Human Disease Models meeting being held at the Lorentz Center, The Netherlands, 24^th – 28^th September, Lab on a Chip and Integrative Biology are delighted to bring you a free* collection of articles on organ-on-chip research.

http://rsc.li/lorentz

These articles will only be available until October 8^th so hurry, don’t miss out!

*Free access is provided to subscribing institutions or to individuals through an RSC Publishing Personal Account. Registration is quick and easy at http://pubs.rsc.org/en/account/register.

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Body heat could drive drug delivery

14 Sep 2012

Another Lab on a Chip article has been picked up by the press, describing a nifty micropump which is powered by fermentation of yeast. Manuel Ochoa and Babak Ziaie, Purdue University, created the “microorganism-powered thermopneumatic pump” by stacking PDMS layers with a silicon substrate drug reservoir and a chamber for the yeast. They showed that when the yeast ferments under body temperatures, the micropump could displace the drug in the reservoir. The technology has caused excitement due to its potential for use in transdermal drug delivery patches, by driving tiny microneedle arrays.

A fermentation-powered thermopneumatic pump for biomedical applications
Manuel Ochoa and Babak Ziaie
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40620A

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Off to Optofluidics 2012? Meet Editor Harp Minhas there

11 Sep 2012

Lab on a Chip Editor Harp Minhas will be attending Optofluidics 2012 which starts this Thursday at Dushu Lake Hotel, Suzhou, China. If you are planning on attending the meeting do introduce yourself to Harp as he would be delighted to meet you.

Also, if you’re off to the conference don’t forget to take a look at our themed issue on optofluidics before you go!

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Article on light-activated muscle has people twitching

04 Sep 2012

A collaborative study by Harry Asada (MIT) and Roger Kamm (Penn State) and colleagues just published in Lab on a Chip has been causing a bit of a stir on the blogosphere recently. The article describes the stimulation of muscle, not by electrical signals as used in the body, but by light. The team engineered skeletal muscle tissue to contain a light-responsive protein, which allowed it to contract when blue light was shone on it, as shown in the video below from the MIT press release:

Jumping straight from this amazing achievement to the future, several blogs have already discussed the potential of this technology for advanced biorobotics (this article was our favourite). Professor Asada is a little more modest and discusses the potential of the engineered muscle to control endoscopes or be used in drug screening programmes.

Read the paper here or take a look at some of the posts on the topic:

siliconANGLE
Judgement Day Beckons: Scientists Grow ‘Light-Activated’ Muscle Tissue For Robots

Wired
Light-activated skeletal muscle could be used to make realistic robots

The Verge
Laser-stimulated muscle tissue could be used to build ‘bio-integrated’ robots

Machines like us
Researchers engineer light-activated skeletal muscle

Formation and optogenetic control of engineered 3D skeletal muscle bioactuators
Mahmut Selman Sakar, Devin M Neal, Thomas Boudou, Michael A Borochin, Yinqing Li, Ron Weiss, Roger Kamm, Christopher S. Chen and H Harry Asada
Lab Chip, 2012, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40338B

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Hot articles in optofluidics

29 Aug 2012

You might have already seen our themed issue on optofluidics but in case you haven’t, here are the HOT articles from this issue:

Yi-Chung Tung et al. review the recent advances in optofluidic technologies that will open up new possibilities for on-chip phenotyping

Optofluidic detection for cellular phenotyping
Yi-Chung Tung, Nien-Tsu Huang, Bo-Ram Oh, Bishnubrata Patra, Chi-Chun Pan, Teng Qiu, Paul K. Chu, Wenjun Zhang and Katsuo Kurabayashi
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40509A

Kevin Raymond et al. have developed an ‘optofluidic nose’ for sensing organic liquids based on wetting in photonic-crystal arrays.

Combinatorial wetting in colour: an optofluidic nose
Kevin P. Raymond, Ian B. Burgess, Mackenzie H. Kinney, Marko Lončar and Joanna Aizenberg
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40489C

Haiwang Li and colleagues demonstrate the design of a bi-concave lens to perform both light focusing and diverging in-plane.

An electrokinetically tunable optofluidic bi-concave lens
Haiwang Li, Chaolong Song, Trung Dung Luong, Nam-Trung Nguyen and Teck Neng Wong
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40406K

Yasutaka Hanada and coworkers show how to create a highly sensitive optofluidic chip for biochemical liquid assays by coating microfluidic channels with a low refractive index polymer and use of an optical waveguide.

Highly sensitive optofluidic chips for biochemical liquid assay fabricated by 3D femtosecond laser micromachining followed by polymer coating
Yasutaka Hanada, Koji Sugioka and Katsumi Midorikawa
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40377C

Jigang Wu, Guoan Zheng and Lap Man Lee focus on compact systems in their review of optical imaging techniques that can be integrated with microfluidics.

Optical imaging techniques in microfluidics and their applications
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40517B

Chao-Min Cheng and colleagues provide thoughtful insight into the application of optofluidics to synthetic biology in this forward-looking Frontier article.

Frontiers of optofluidics in synthetic biology
Cheemeng Tan, Shih-Jie Lo, Philip R. LeDuc and Chao-Min Cheng
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40828G

Shih-Kang Fan’s team manipulate 200 nL bubbles with DEP and ignite microplasma within them, with potential for future applications in the biomedical field.

Atmospheric-pressure microplasma in dielectrophoresis-driven bubbles for optical emission spectroscopy
Shih-Kang Fan, Yan-Ting Shen, Ling-Pin Tsai, Cheng-Che Hsu, Fu-Hsiang Ko and Yu-Ting Cheng
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40499K

Wenqi Hu, Kelly S. Ishii, Qihui Fan and Aaron T. Ohta report a hydrogel microrobot which can be manipulated by laser-induced bubbles. Single or pairs of robots are able to assemble polystyrene beads and yeast cells into patterns.

Hydrogel microrobots actuated by optically generated vapour bubbles
Wenqi Hu, Kelly S. Ishii, Qihui Fan and Aaron T. Ohta
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40483D

Remember, all our cover articles are free to access for 6 weeks, and our HOT articles for 4 weeks. All you need to access them is an RSC Publishing Personal Account – signing up is quick and easy.

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Themed issue on optofluidics out now

23 Aug 2012

Lab on a Chip is delighted to publish what we believe is the first issue dedicated to research in the exciting new field of optofluidics, guest edited by Professors Ai-Qun Liu (Nanyang Technological University) and Changhuei Yang (Caltech).

Read their editorial introduction to the issue, where they discuss some of the most innovative new developments in this rapidly blossoming field.

We’ve got some great artwork on the covers of this issue, highlighting the range of articles in this issue:

Katsuo Kurabayashi et al. have discussed the promise of optofluidic technologies to enable on-chip cellular phenotyping in their critical review which features on the outside front cover. On the inside front cover Joanna Aizenberg and colleagues have developed an ‘optofluidic nose’ – a litmus test which can differentiate organics liquids based on wetting, while on the back cover Teck Neng Wong et al. have created an optofluidic bi-concave lens to both focus and diverge a light source by applying an external electric field to a constant flow. On the other back cover Katsumi Midorikawa and coworkers fabricated highly sensitive optofluidic chips for biochemical liquid assays.

Don’t forget – all articles on our covers are free to access for 6 weeks! You just need to sign in with your RSC Publishing Personal Account.

View the rest of the issue

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Sharp images of turbid flows in microfluidic devices

03 Aug 2012

Pietro Ferraro and colleagues from three Italian research institutes have used digital holography to image objects in turbid flowing media in microfluidic devices. Although many current techniques are able to provide in situ images of liquids flowing in microfluidic devices, they are limited to cases of clear liquids with relatively stable flows. Due to the Doppler effect of flowing colloidal particles the researchers were able to reconstruct digital holographic images, and demonstrated this with milk:

As with all our HOT articles, this one is free to access for 4 weeks following a simple registration:

Microscopy imaging and quantitative phase contrast mapping in turbid microfluidic channels by digital holography
Melania Paturzo, Andrea Finizio, Pasquale Memmolo, Roberto Puglisi, Donatella Balduzzi, Andrea Galli and Pietro Ferraro
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40114B

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Issue 17 now online

03 Aug 2012

We’ve got another jam-packed issue for you this week, with some colourful articles on the cover from Lee Hubble, Jochen Hoffman and Helena Zec.

On the outside front cover Lee Hubble from CSIRO and colleagues have used functionalised gold nanoparticle chemiresistor sensors to simultaneously perform on-chip protein separation and metabolite detection in biofluids. They were able to avoid problems of protein and lipid-fouling by using ultrafiltration membranes to prevent large molecules interacting with the golf nanoparticle chemiresitor sensors:

Gold nanoparticle chemiresistors operating in biological fluids
Lee J. Hubble, Edith Chow, James S. Cooper, Melissa Webster, Karl-Heinz Müller, Lech Wieczorek and Burkhard Raguse
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40575J

The inside front cover from Jochen Hoffman and colleagues at University of Freiburg demonstrates an method that combines large scale picowell array-based liquid phase PCR amplification with solid phase PCR. The authors have immobilised the PCR products on a microscope slide to enable recovery and achieved single DNA molecule amplification:

Solid-phase PCR in a picowell array for immobilizing and arraying 100 000 PCR products to a microscope slide
Jochen Hoffmann, Martin Trotter, Felix von Stetten, Roland Zengerle and Günter Roth
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40534B

And on the back cover Helena Zec and colleagues present a droplet platform for generating nanolitre droplets of combinational mixtures. Sample plugs from a multiwell are split into nanolitre droplets which can be injected with four different reagents – in this paper, food colouring, to prove their concept. Due to the automatic spatial indexing of the droplets, droplet barcoding is not necessary.

Microfluidic platform for on-demand generation of spatially indexed combinatorial droplets
Helena Zec, Tushar D. Rane and Tza-Huei Wang
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40399D

Also in this issue we have the latest Research Highlights from Ali Khademhosseini to keep you up to date with the most important miniaturisation research, Acoustofluidics number 17 from Michael Gedge and Martyn Hill and an interesting Focus article from Samuel Stavis on testing standards for lab on a chip devices, as well as plenty of HOT articles.

View the issue

Ps. Don’t forget all our cover articles are free to access for 6 weeks following a simple registration!

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Measuring migration of individual cells

02 Aug 2012

Yanyi Huang and colleagues at Peking University have developed a microfluidic-based assay to allow them to quantitatively measure single cell migration speeds. Existing methods for determining cell migration are abundant, as the process is important for processes such as cancer metastasis, embryonic development and wound healing, but it is very difficult to distinguish between migrating and proliferating cells in current assays.

Using their migration assay, Huang and colleagues were able to show that HUVEC migration is epigenetically regulated:

Live cell imaging analysis of the epigenetic regulation of the human endothelial cell migration at single-cell resolution
Chunhong Zheng, Zhilong Yu, Ying Zhou, Louis Tao, Yuhong Pang, Tao Chen, Xiannian Zhang, Haiwei Qiu, Hongwei Zhou, Zitian Chen and Yanyi Huang
DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40192D

As with all our HOT articles, this one is free to access for 4 weeks following a simple registration.

Also check out the video showing their device in operation:

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