Intracellular delivery of mRNA to human primary T cells with microfluidic vortex shedding.

Intracellular delivery of functional macromolecules, such as DNA and RNA, across the cell membrane and into the cytosol, is a critical process in both biology and medicine. Herein, we develop and use microfluidic chips containing post arrays to induce microfluidic vortex shedding, or μVS, for cell membrane poration that permits delivery of mRNA into primary human T lymphocytes. We demonstrate transfection with μVS by delivery of a 996-nucleotide mRNA construct encoding enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) and assessed transfection efficiencies by quantifying levels of EGFP protein expression.

Photoactivated bioconjugation between ortho-azidophenols and anilines: a facile approach to biomolecular photopatterning.

Methods for the surface patterning of small molecules and biomolecules can yield useful platforms for drug screening, synthetic biology applications, diagnostics, and the immobilization of live cells. However, new techniques are needed to achieve the ease, feature sizes, reliability, and patterning speed necessary for widespread adoption. Herein, we report an easily accessible and operationally simple photoinitiated reaction that can achieve patterned bioconjugation in a highly chemoselective manner.

Direct attachment of microbial organisms to material surfaces through sequence-specific DNA hybridization.

A new technique is reported for the attachment of synthetic DNA strands to the surfaces of microbial organisms. This gives algal, bacterial, and fungal cells the ability to bind to complementary strands extending from patterned surfaces that can be produced on platforms such as microfluidic devices. The ability of this method to establish complex 2- and 3-dimensional cocultures comprising multiple organism types is also presented.