Microfluidic approaches for systems and synthetic biology.
Microfluidic systems miniaturise biological experimentation leading to reduced sample volume, analysis time and cost. Recent innovations have allowed the application of -omics approaches on the microfluidic scale. It is now possible to perform 1.5 million PCR reactions simultaneously, obtain transcriptomic data from as little as 150 cells (as few as 2 transcripts per gene of interest) and perform mass-spectrometric analyses online. For synthetic biology, unit operations have been developed that allow de novo construction of synthetic systems from oligonucleotide synthesis through to high-throughput, high efficiency electroporation of single cells or encapsulation into abiotic chassis enabling the processing of thousands of synthetic organisms per hour. Future directions include a push towards integrating more processes into a single device and replacing off-chip analyses where possible.
Szita
Nicolas
N
Department of Biochemical Engineering, University College London, Torrington Place, London, WC1E 7JE, United Kingdom. n.szita@ucl.ac.uk
Polizzi
Karen
K
Jaccard
Nicolas
N
Baganz
Frank
F
D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D023281:Genomics; D055432:Metabolomics; D044085:Microfluidics; D040901:Proteomics; D049490:Systems Biology