Microfluidic approaches for systems and synthetic biology.

Microfluidic approaches for systems and synthetic biology.: "Publication Date: 2010 Aug PMID: 20829028
Authors: Szita, N. - Polizzi, K. - Jaccard, N. - Baganz, F.
Journal: Curr Opin Biotechnol

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.

(Via Current Opinion in Biotechnology.)