Aqueous microdroplet encapsulation of normal or cancerous single cells

作者：March N H; Knapp Mohammady M^*

来源：Physics and Chemistry of Liquids, 2011, 49(3): 409-413.

DOI：10.1080/00319104.2010.510996

• microdroplet
• single cell encapsulation
• blood cells
• fractal geometry

Microdroplet encapsulation of normal or cancerous single cells has by now been achieved experimentally. Here we focus on one important approach advocated by Chabert and Viovy [Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 105, 3191 (2008)]; see also Dupin etal. [Dupin, Halliday, and Care, Phys. Rev. Ser. E 73, 055701 (2006); Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. A 362, 1885 (2004)]. One can encapsulate a single cell in an appropriate microdroplet with volume kept to a minimal value (e.g. from two to eight times the initial volume of the cell). We refer then specifically to the sorting of the cells from blood, an example discussed in Chabert and Viovy (2008). As Chabert and Viovy emphasise and as is very important for this article, the membrane of the cell remains intact following the encapsulation procedure within a microdroplet. So it may be of interest to explore further experimental techniques which we refer to briefly, if these are feasible to study anomalous diffusion, especially in encapsulated cell membranes. Finally, it is to be hoped that the current controversy concerning the relevance of fractal geometry to understanding the range of size of organisms can be resolved. The authors of this article take the view that there are experimental foundations in biology to support the use of fractal geometry.

• 出版日期2011