微流控芯片测定单细胞内化学组分的进展

Recent Advances in the Determination of Intracellular Contents in Individual Cells Using Microfluidic Devices

细胞是生命的基本单元。由于细胞的个体差异,传统分析群体细胞的方法难以得到单细胞的重要信息。准确可靠地测定单细胞内化学组分的含量能大大提高从正常细胞中辨别不正常细胞的能力,为进一步研究和发展生物化学、医学和临床检验等领域奠定基础。近年来,用微流控芯片进行单细胞分析已引起广泛的兴趣。微流控芯片可以集成单细胞进样、溶膜、电泳分离胞内化学组分和高灵敏度测定等一系列操作步骤,为分析单细胞内的化学组分提供了新的技术平台。本文主要综述了近年来微流控芯片测定单细胞内化学组分的进展。重点在于利用电渗流、压力结合电渗流和激光镊子等技术操控单细胞在微流控芯片上完成单细胞进样、溶膜、细胞内化学组分的电泳分离和高灵敏度测定等一系列操作步骤。对在微流控芯片上的衍生技术也做了较为详细的阐述。

Cells are the fundamental unit of life. Owing to cellular heterogeneity, traditional biochemical assays which analyze cells in bulk often overlook the rich information available when single cells are studied. Accurate and reliable determination of the chemical composition in individual cells would greatly improve the probability of discriminating infected cells from healthy ones and provide a solid foundation on study and development in various fields including biochemistry, medicine, and pathology clinic. Microfluidic chip system for single-cell analysis is now attracting broad interests. The ability of integrating the whole process on one microfluidic chip, including single cell injection, lysis, separation and detection of cellular constituents by chip-based CE, offers a new technical platform for single cell analysis. This article provides a review on recent advances in determining intracellular contents in individual cells using microfluidic devices. Focus areas include on-chip single cell manipulation by means of eleetroosmotie flow （EOF） , pressure-driven flow combined with EOF and opticaltweezer （OT） to perform sequentially single cell injection, lysis, separation and detection of cellular constituents by chip-based CE with highly sensitive detection. The approaches on on-chip derivatization are also addressed.