Cells on chips
Info. of Article
Jamil El-Ali, Peter K. Sorger & Klavs F. Jensen, "Cells on chips", Nature, v. 442, 2006, pp. 403~411.
Full text: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7101/pdf/nature05063.pdf
Main idea of article
In the first section, the authors explain why the "cells on chip" is important to us. ("cells on chip" means to do cell-related biological research or analysis on chips. Some people also call them "lab-on-a-chip" or "micro-total-analysis-system"(uTAS)). The authors believe the significance of "cells on chip" will be similar to the role that miniaturization has played for microelectronics. Our intuition thought would be that "cells on chip" simply represent miniaturized versions of conventional laboratory techniques, but the authors tell you it is far beyond that. In micro world, there are many wonderful advantages that are not true in macro scale. For example, you can easily have favorable scaling of electrical fields due to small length and well-controlled laminar flows due to the low Reynolds numbers in microchannels. Moreover, instead of fabricating individual small-scale equipments piece by piece, the researchers have been making the microsystems incorporating several steps of an assay into a single system. By doing this, you can do experiments on a single chip quickly and effectively. You name the benefits: small sample request, far less labour intensive (just think about what people expect typical biology-majored students often do in their labs), and avoiding of potential error-prone laboratory manipulations. With developed micromaching technology, it is also easy to batch produce such devices cheaply. In a word, “cells on chip” will be a wonderful breakthrough, no matter you consider from the perspective of pure research, cost, or effectiveness.
After the introduction, the authors go into the details, extensively but logically introducing up-to-date progress in each step of a cell experiment ranging from cell culture, selection, lysis, separation to final analysis. The article is well organized. Roughly speaking, in each step, the authors will tell you the major biological mechanisms in this step, then how they can be realized in micro scale, and finish it with some vivid practical examples and beautiful pictures. I would like to introduce as detail as above, however, the topics of this article are so wide that you bet my summary would be far less attractive than those used by the authors. Since you know what they are going to talk about, why don't you explore it by your self?
Why it is worth your reading?
——Chosen from a possibly different view
Slightly different from most of you, I am a graduate student spending years in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering but having never learnt any biology (BioE115 is my first-ever bio-related class in college.) So my choice may be more from an engineer view rather than a biologist view. Read it to see whether your view is different from mine.
——Read it like watching movies
Instead of focusing on a specific phenomenon or application, this article is like an excellent scientific documentary. You won't have to face any never-heard-of nomenclatures or massive arguments and calculations.
——Open yourself to a new world
By using a short period of time (if you exclude pictures and references, this article has only about 5 pages of text content.), you may quite probably open yourself to an unknown world which is actually not far away from you. No matter how well you are familiar with biology or engineerings, you will find something new and worthy. Trust me on this.
——Be an early bird
With the well-known example of IC technology, device miniaturization is a long-term tendency in many fields. You had better know a little about it from now on.
——Trustable and strong
It is a REVIEW in NATURE written by several MIT professors. You can imagine how often you could see such a combination.
You are welcome to raise any questions. With spending years in microfabrication cleaning room, I believe I may be helpful in practical issues such as device design and fabrication (but weak in those too theorital and too biological).
Now, welcome to micro world, a both familiar and unknown world!
7 comments:
This article seems like an excellent review article summarizing the overall types of lab on a chip systems. It seems to include a reasonable amount of detail, while also being sufficiently comprehensive.
One thing that I've heard about these cell-lab-on-a-chip devices is that although there is immense interest in the biotechnology field to develop these platforms, the target audience in general (biologists and other researchers, that is, people who are supposed to be using these devices) shows comparatively less enthusiasm in implementing these new technologies into its research. This is probably because the benefits of a cell-on-a-chip have not yet been manifested, giving promises for tomorrow rather than results today.
Is this something you've heard about too, or am I just listening to rumors?
I remember hearing that labs-on-a-chip could be very efficient and cost-effective because they require very minuscule amounts of reagent/material, which would save resources/money when using rare and/or expensive reagents/materials. This was also supposed to be useful for detecting molecules that are present in very low concentrations since only a minuscule amount is needed to set off the detector.
To clarify my understanding, I was wondering about how these "cells on chip" differs from BioMEMS?
Recently, Prof. Bernhard Boser from UCB actually showed me his work: chip for testing an infection. It can tell how bad someone is infected with a virus or other things, such as in Dengue fever. I would say that this is a big area in biotech. But at the same time, I feel funny that I've never heard about it before. Your article seems in the same area as his work.
Thank guys who are interested in this topic.
To Brian E. Lee:
What you said is right in some sense. It is true that currently more EE and ME guys are enthusiasm in these directions than those potential users, biologists and medical researchers. But you must know this direction came to people's eyes only within a couple of years. Secondly, cells on chip (or BioMEMS) is such an interdiscipline field that it looks uncomfortable to both of the two sides. It requires much co-operation (as you may notice this in the authors list) and can't be expected with quick return. These may explain why it is not fancy to somebody. However, it is the trend to make a future research in this way.
To Merline Hidayat
Glad to know you know the term of "BioMEMS". BioMEMS refers to any MEMS(Micro- Electro Mechanical Systems) structure having the potential applicaitons in biology. It covers a wide range. Cells on chip is the major part of it. Sometimes, you don't need to distinguish the two.
Aha, what you are saying is certainly right.Prof. Bosar is one of the directors in BSAC(Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center), just where I am doing my research in, although his research is much more close to the real market than my own research, something about carbon nanotubes...
Micro total analysis systems seems like a really cool idea. I did work in a microfluidics lab that contributed to the Lab on a Chip journal, so I am somewhat familiar with the terms used in the article.
I like the engineering perspective of this article, it makes the topic seem more legitimate.
Brian,
A lot of the core audience for BioMEMS won't get excited until the technology is advanced enough to be used by people outside of the BioMEMS field.
Right now a lot of these devices are, for lack of a better word, "cranky". They require a lot of know-how to get them to work. Proving that you can do a reaction on a chip is the first step - you need to make that chip "plug-and-play" before the customers get excited.
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