A DROPLET-BASED MICROFLUIDIC RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY FOR GENETIC ANALYSIS OF SINGLE CELLS

摘要

We report the development and application of a microfluidic random access memory (RAM) that enables fully programmable formulation of an array of 95 nanolitre-scale reactions and subsequent random access to any reaction for addition of reagents or selective extraction of reaction products. This functionality is enabled by a novel droplet docking mechanism that exploits the physics of droplet flow through a channel to control the precise location of droplet immobilization. We have applied this device to the genetic analysis of single cells by isolating single bacteria and performing both quantitative PCR and whole genome amplification (WGA).