POSITIONING OF CELLS IN MICROSTRUCTURE AND EXTRACTION OF CONTINUOUS DNA FIBERS FROM INDIVIDUAL CELLS

摘要

The paper presents two technologies for DNA fiber stretching: cell positioning and drawing DNA fibers out of the cell. The device consists of an electroosomotic flow (EOF) chamber having micro fabricated structures. The structure for cell positioning has openings whose dimension is chosen to accept only one cell at a time, to which cells carried by uni-directional EOF are positioned, one cell at each opening. After enzymatically rupturing cells, DNA fibers can be drawn out of each cell and stretched by EOF. To maintain stretched conformation, we use an array of micro-pillars around which the fiber is wound by sequentially changing the direction of EOF. The fiber is freely suspended without contact to solid surfaces except at the pillars, allowing free access of foreign molecules. Such configuration is expected to realize high-efficiency gene location based on DNA hybridization or protein binding.