Title
High-Throughput Automated Injection of Individual Biological Cells
Abstract
The ability of efficiently delivering soluable/insoluable drug compounds or biomolecules into individual biological cells and quantifying their cellular responses is important for genetics, proteomics, and drug discovery. This paper presents a fully automated system for zebrafish embryo injection, which overcomes the problems inherent in manual injection, such as human fatigue and large variations in success rates due to poor reproducibility. Based on ldquolooking-then-movingrdquo control, the microrobotic system performs injection at a speed of 15 zebrafish embryos (chorion unremoved) per minute. Besides a high injection speed that compares favorably with that of a highly proficient injection technician, a vacuum-based embryo holding device enables fast immobilization of a large number of zebrafish embryos, shortening the embryo patterning process from minutes to seconds. The recognition of embryo structures from image processing identifies a desired destination inside the embryo for material deposition, together with precise motion control resulting in a success rate of 100%. Carefully tuning suction pressure levels as well as injection and retraction speeds produced a high survival rate of 98%. The quantitative performance evaluation of the automated system was based on the continuous injection of 250 zebrafish embryos. The technologies can be extended to other biological injection applications such as the injection of mouse embryos, Drosophila embryos, and C. elegans to enable high-throughput biological and pharmaceutical research.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1109/TASE.2008.917136
Automation Science and Engineering, IEEE Transactions
Keywords
Field
DocType
automation,biocontrol,biological techniques,cellular biophysics,drug delivery systems,drugs,microrobots,automated system,biological cells,biomolecules,image processing,looking-then-moving control,soluable/insoluable drug compounds,zebrafish embryo injection,Cell injection,computer vision,drug delivery,genetics,high-throughput,microrobotic control,molecule screening,success rate,survival rate,zebrafish embryos
Biomedical engineering,Cellular biophysics,Cell injection,Computer science,Embryo,Zebrafish,Molecular biophysics,Throughput,Drug delivery
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
6
2
1545-5955
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
27
2.29
8
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Wenhui Wang19219.23
Xinyu Liu214522.92
Yu Sun341869.89