title: The construction of an interfacial valve-based microfluidic chip for thermotaxis evaluation of human sperm.
abstract: Thermotaxis has been demonstrated to be an important criterion for sperm evaluation, yet clinical assessment of thermotaxis capacity is currently lacking. In this article, the on-chip thermotaxis evaluation of human sperm is presented for the first time using an interfacial valve-facilitated microfluidic device. The temperature gradient was established and accurately controlled by an external temperature gradient control system. The temperature gradient responsive sperm population was enriched into one of the branch channels with higher temperature setting and the non-responsive ones were evenly distributed into the two branch channels. We employed air-liquid interfacial valves to ensure stable isolation of the two branches, facilitating convenient manipulation of the entrapped sperm. With this device, thermotactic responses were observed in 5.7%-10.6% of the motile sperm moving through four temperature ranges (34.0-35.3 °C, 35.0-36.3 °C, 36.0-37.3 °C, and 37.0-38.3 °C, respectively). In conclusion, we have developed a new method for high throughput clinical evaluation of sperm thermotaxis and this method may allow other researchers to derive better IVF procedure.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China.
authors.forename: Zhuoqi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China.
authors.forename: Weiran
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China.
authors.forename: Tian
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Qiu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China.
authors.forename: Lan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China.
authors.forename: Weixing
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Ran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China.
authors.forename: Keith
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mitchelson
authors.affiliation: Shanxi Key Laboratory of Ecological Animal Science and Environmental Medicine, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, Shanxi 030801, China.
authors.forename: Jundong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Center of Reproduction Medicine, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Third Hospital of Peking University, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing 100084, China ; National Engineering Research Center for Beijing Biochip Technology, 18 Life Science Parkway, Beijing 102206, China ; The State Key Laboratory of Biomembrane and Membrane Biotechnology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cheng