Robotic adherent cell injection for characterizing cell-cell communication

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

77 Scopus Citations
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Author(s)

  • Vinayakumar Siragam
  • Zheng Gong
  • Jun Chen
  • Michael D. Fridman
  • Clement Leung
  • Zhe Lu
  • Changhai Ru
  • Shaorong Xie
  • Jun Luo
  • Robert M. Hamilton
  • Yu Sun

Detail(s)

Original languageEnglish
Article number6863643
Pages (from-to)119-125
Journal / PublicationIEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
Volume62
Issue number1
Online published24 Jul 2014
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2015
Externally publishedYes

Abstract

Compared to robotic injection of suspended cells (e.g., embryos and oocytes), fewer attempts were made to automate the injection of adherent cells (e.g., cancer cells and cardiomyocytes) due to their smaller size, highly irregular morphology, small thickness (a few micrometers thick), and large variations in thickness across cells. This paper presents a robotic system for automated microinjection of adherent cells. The system is embedded with several new capabilities: automatically locating micropipette tips; robustly detecting the contact of micropipette tip with cell culturing surface and directly with cell membrane; and precisely compensating for accumulative positioning errors. These new capabilities make it practical to perform adherent cell microinjection truly via computer mouse clicking in front of a computer monitor, on hundreds and thousands of cells per experiment (versus a few to tens of cells as state of the art). System operation speed, success rate, and cell viability rate were quantitatively evaluated based on robotic microinjection of over 4000 cells. This paper also reports the use of the new robotic system to perform cell-cell communication studies using large sample sizes. The gap junction function in a cardiac muscle cell line (HL-1 cells), for the first time, was quantified with the system.

Research Area(s)

  • Cell communication, drug testing, gap junction, microinjection, robotics, toxicology testing

Citation Format(s)

Robotic adherent cell injection for characterizing cell-cell communication. / Liu, Jun; Siragam, Vinayakumar; Gong, Zheng et al.
In: IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 62, No. 1, 6863643, 01.2015, p. 119-125.

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review