[extropy-chat] On the verge of automated cell-sorting

[Dan Clemmensen]

Jeff Davis wrote:

>Engineers create optoelectronic tweezers to round up
>cells, microparticles
>
>http://www.eurekalert.org/pubnews.php?view=titles
>
>"Optoelectronic tweezers can produce instant
>microfluidic circuits without the need for
>sophisticated microfabrication techniques." 
>
>"Our design has a strong practical advantage in that,
>unlike optical tweezers, a simple light source, such
>as a light-emitting diode or halogen lamp, is powerful
>enough," said Chiou, a Ph.D. student in electrical
>engineering and computer sciences and lead author of
>the paper. "That is about 100,000 times less intense
>than the power required for optical tweezers." 
>
>The researchers are now studying ways to combine this
>technology with computer pattern recognition so that
>the sorting process could be automated. "We could
>design the program to separate cells by size,
>luminescence, texture, fluorescent tags and basically
>any characteristic that can be distinguished
>visually."
>
>  
>
Cell sorting was reduced to practice about 20 years ago.
Google "cell sorting." get a great many hits, including
http://www.bdbiosciences.com/immunocytometry_systems/products/display_product.php?keyID=53

Commercial cell sorters use a system similar to a jet on an ink-jet
head to produce tiny droplets that (statistically) contain either 0 one 
cell.
Each droplet is given an electrical charge, and is sampled (e.g. with a UV
probe to see if it contains a cell of interest. if so, the droplet is 
diverted into
the "collected"stream using a static charge.