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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Journal Club Article Friday April 2

Lab on a Chip
January 7, 2009

Title and Authors
Dropspots: a picoliter array in a microfluidic device†
Christian H. J. Schmitz,‡ Amy C. Rowat,‡* Sarah Ko¨ster and David A. Weitz*
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11 comments:

  1. LaurenApril 1, 2010 at 10:50 AM

    Lauren Kolski
    Schmitz

    1. A device to observe single cells. Allows more for accurate data/better statistics
    2. Must all these cells in the device undergo the same type of observation, or can you have, per se, 1/2 of the cells receiving some chemical and the other 1/2 receiving another? This way you can directly compare the cells on a cell-to-cell basis?
    3. The flaws in the present method (finding average vs. individual output, population growth, etc)
    4. How easy is it to use this machine? How applicable is it, really? Could it be integrated into any SyBBURE work?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tang DhummakuptApril 1, 2010 at 1:52 PM

    Tang Dhummakupt
    Schmitz

    1. A microfluidic device has been developed for monitoring an array of small droplets that have been separated.
    2. How does the bypass channel inlet work to control the flow of droplets?
    3. Advantages of using an array of small samples as opposed to a bulk average

    ReplyDelete
  3. rachel harveyApril 1, 2010 at 5:59 PM

    Rachel Harvey
    Schmitz

    1. They developed a microfluidic device/methods to observe individual cells.
    2. What is pheromone-regulated lacZ fusion?
    3. Statistical differences in new methods vs. old methods

    ReplyDelete
  4. Samat KabaniApril 1, 2010 at 6:29 PM

    Samat Kabani
    Schmitz

    1. A microfluidic device was created to look at cells on a more individual level.
    2. What is the largest/smallest cell size one can isolated in this device?
    3. Advantages of this device over previous devices

    ReplyDelete
  5. RosieApril 1, 2010 at 8:17 PM

    Rosie Korman

    1. Schmitz et al created a MF device that can immobilize and store pL drops.
    2. How are the drops generated on chip?
    How are the drops flowed through the device?
    What are the drops made of - do they contain the nutrients, etc necessary for the cells?
    How long can a dividing cell survive in a drop?
    Can you retrieve a specific cell or cell population from a specific drop?
    3. Coupling this device to other types of MF devices.

    Sorry for all of the questions :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Liwei JiangApril 1, 2010 at 8:40 PM

    Liwei Jiang
    Schmitz

    1. The authors present a microfluidic device that confines arrays of small drops to monitor isolated cell(s).
    2. Questions: (1) I know this has been asked before, but what this the purpose of the the snake-like channels in Fig. 1a? (2) Are the "shear forces" mentioned on page 45 detrimental to larger cells (e.g. 10 micron diameter)?
    3. Are there any current papers that use this device?
    4. (1) I am not convinced that the authors can reliably load the device such that most of the drops have at most a single cell as they say. Of course they can go nuts in diluting the cell suspension, but then one can't study that many cells anymore. (2) Considering that eukaryotic cells range from 10 to 100 microns in diameter, the size of the constriction regions (20 microns) must be a critical limitation on what cells can be studied in this device.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Tommy ByrdApril 1, 2010 at 9:12 PM

    Tommy Byrd
    Schmitz
    1. Single-cell oil suspension cultures allow picoliter analysis of highly concentrated biochemicals in fluidic solution
    2. How exactly does a cell become encapsulated in an sphere of oil via this device? What are the most obvious applications of this technology?
    3. Application to drop systems for culture of embryonic stem cells
    4. Certainly this technology has certain advantages, but does not account for the kinds of intercellular signaling that would be observed in vivo. I would like to see these drops transferred to a larger volume device and used secondarily with larger populations of cells

    ReplyDelete
  8. Elyse SadeghiApril 1, 2010 at 9:23 PM

    1. Developed a microfluidic device to study individual cells over time.
    2. How do they recover cells from drops?
    3. Other applications of this device

    ReplyDelete
  9. ParkerApril 1, 2010 at 10:40 PM

    Parker Gould
    Schmitz and Rowat
    1. A MF device that isolates small numbers of cells into individual droplets for analysis was demonstrated.
    2. Any idea on the proportion of droplets containing cells or some sort of cells per droplet value?
    3. Nice idea on the spoked punch inlets.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Chaitanya AllamneniApril 1, 2010 at 11:03 PM

    Chaitanya Allamneni
    Schmitz

    1. A microfluidic device was developed to trap picoliter droplets in order to study individual cells.

    2. So does each oil drop correspond to a single cell ; i know that with the hanging DROPS for EB's contain many cells...is it a similar method to form these droplets (in relation to question above)

    2. Could this dropspot device setup be used for EB's also

    ReplyDelete
  11. Elizabeth LillieApril 2, 2010 at 1:20 AM

    Elizabeth Lillie
    Schmitz

    1. A microfluidic device is used to grow many cell cultures in small volume. This enables them to monitor the evolution of thousands of samples to produce good statistics.
    2. How many cells are in each drop, and how long can a cell survive if its in oil?
    3. Papers about this method but more medical uses, like would it work to moniter the evolution of a virus like the common cold?

    ReplyDelete

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