posted on 2020-03-23, 15:37authored byChristoph Frey, Kerstin Göpfrich, Sadaf Pashapour, Ilia Platzman, Joachim P. Spatz
Droplet-based microfluidics
have emerged as an important tool for
diverse biomedical and biological applications including, but not
limited to, drug screening, cellular analysis, and bottom-up synthetic
biology. Each microfluidic water-in-oil droplet contains a well-defined
biocontent that, following its manipulation/maturation, has to be
released into a physiological environment toward possible end-user
investigations. Despite the progress made in recent years, considerable
challenges still loom at achieving a precise control over the content
release with sufficient speed and sensitivity. Here, we present a
quantitative study in which we compare the effectiveness and biocompatibility
of chemical and physical microfluidic release methods. We show the
advantages of electrocoalescence of water-in-oil droplets in terms
of high-throughput release applications. Moreover, we apply programmable
DNA nanotechnology to achieve a segregation of the biochemical content
within the droplets for the controlled filtration of the encapsulated
materials. We envision that the developed bifunctional microfluidic
approach, capable of content segregation and selective release, will
expand the microfluidic toolbox for cell biology, synthetic biology,
and biomedical applications.