Development of a bubble-based single cell picking system

In this work, we proposed a novel method to 'pick' single cell from a cluster of cells using bubbles as 'fingers'. Particularly, the bubble was generated in the cell suspension solution via the pores in a porous membrane sandwiched between the solution channel and the gas channel. Controlling the pressure of the gas and the cell suspension could produce a bubble with certain size in the solution channel, and the bubble could capture a cell in its surface due to the interfacial tension between the cell suspension solution and the bubble, and then transfer the cell away. A simplified mechanical model was built to interpret the mechanism of the cell control. This method can be easily applied on multiple fields, including the single cell analysis, drug screening, cells sorting, and tumor biology, since it could separate a single cell from the cell cluster efficiently.