Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2010
Volume 55, Number 2
Monday–Friday, March 15–19, 2010; Portland, Oregon
Session W2: Drop-based Microfluidics for Use with Soft-materials and Biology |
Hide Abstracts |
Sponsoring Units: DCMP Chair: Michael Rubinstein, University of North Carolina Room: Oregon Ballroom 202 |
Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:15AM - 11:51AM |
W2.00001: Emulsion-based microfluidics for high-throughput biology Invited Speaker: A challenge for many biological experiments is that they require huge numbers of reactions to be performed. For example, in a typical screen, millions of microbes must be assayed; in a directed evolution experiment, hundreds of millions of cells must be sorted; to sequence the human genome, billions of biochemical reactions must be performed. In these cases, the reactions themselves are fairly simple, but the vast numbers that must be performed make the experiments challenging and very expensive. We have developed an emulsion-based microfluidic system that can perform billions of reactions quickly and inexpensively. The system follows modular design principles, making it generally applicable to biological experiments. To illustrate this, we will describe two proof-of-concept demonstrations. We will describe the use of this system to evolve a natural enzyme to have higher catalytic activity; this required screening hundreds of millions of mutants, which took a few hours and used only 100 microliters of reagent. To perform the same screen using a robot would have taken 2 years and cost over 1 million dollars—-in pipette tips alone. We will also describe how we are using this approach for genomic DNA sequencing; with this system we can perform billions of sequencing reactions in a few hours using less than 1 milliliter of total reagent. The speed and universality of this approach enables a range of new high-throughput biological studies. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:51AM - 12:27PM |
W2.00002: The PhaseChip: Manipulating Phase Diagrams with Microfluidics Invited Speaker: X-ray diffraction of protein crystals reveals protein structure, which is needed to advance fundamental understanding of protein function and for drug development. Currently the physical process of crystallization is the bottleneck in protein structure determination. The PhaseChip is a microfluidic device that can precisely meter, mix, and store nanoliter volumes of sample, solvent, and other reagents. Thousands of nanoliter drops of different protein solutions are stored in individual wells on chip. Through the controlled kinetic manipulation of the solution chemical potential the process of nucleation and growth can be decoupled, which is crucial for optimizing protein crystallization. Movies illustrating the PhaseChip in action: http://www.elsie.brandeis.edu/ [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:27PM - 1:03PM |
W2.00003: Breaking of an Emulsion under an ac Electric Field Invited Speaker: |
Thursday, March 18, 2010 1:03PM - 1:39PM |
W2.00004: Electrowetting Control of Droplets for Biomedical Applications on Chips Invited Speaker: Electrowetting on dielectric (EWD) is the phenomenon whereby an electric field can modify the wetting behavior of a polarizable and/or conductive liquid droplet in contact with a hydrophobic, insulated electrode. The application of a voltage between the liquid and the electrode results in an electric field across the insulator that lowers the interfacial tension between the liquid and the insulator surface according to the Lippman-Young equation. Droplet transport is performed over contiguous electrodes, which connect different fluidic operations on chip. In biomedical applications it is required to transport biological liquids and beads. The transport of non-biological electrolytes using electrowetting has been demonstrated both in air and in other immiscible media such as silicone oil. Complex, programmable assays have been demonstrated. [Preview Abstract] |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700