Uniform yeast cell assembly via microfluidics Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • This paper reports the use of microfluidic approaches for the fabrication of yeastosomes (yeast-celloidosomes) based on self-assembly of yeast cells onto liquid-solid or liquid-gas interfaces. Precise control over fluidic flows in droplet- and bubble-forming microfluidic devices allows production of monodispersed, size-selected templates. The general strategy to organize and assemble living cells is to tune electrostatic attractions between the template (gel or gas core) and the cells via surface charging. Layer-by-Layer (LbL) polyelectrolyte deposition was employed to invert or enhance charges of solid surfaces. We demonstrated the ability to produce high-quality, monolayer-shelled yeastosome structures under proper conditions when sufficient electrostatic driving forces are present. The combination of microfluidic fabrication with cell self-assembly enables a versatile platform for designing synthetic hierarchy bio-structures.

author list (cited authors)

  • Chang, Y., He, P., Marquez, S. M., & Cheng, Z.

complete list of authors

  • Chang, Ya-Wen||He, Peng||Marquez, Samantha M||Cheng, Zhengdong

publication date

  • January 2012