Live mammalian cell arrays.

High-content assays have the potential to drastically increase throughput in cell biology and drug discovery, but handling and culturing large libraries of cells such as primary tumor or cancer cell lines requires expensive, dedicated robotic equipment. We developed a simple yet powerful method that uses contact spotting to generate high-density nanowell arrays of live mammalian cells for the culture and interrogation of cell libraries.

A software-programmable microfluidic device for automated biology.

Specific-purpose microfluidic devices have had considerable impact on the biological and chemical sciences, yet their use has largely remained limited to specialized laboratories. Here we present a general-purpose software-programmable microfluidic device which is capable of performing a multitude of low- and high-level functions without requiring any hardware modifications. To demonstrate the applicability and modularity of the device we implemented a variety of applications such as a microfluidic display, fluid metering and active mixing, surface immunoassays, and cell culture.

Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reactions in aqueous microdroplets with catalytically active fluorous interfaces.

Using microfluidic techniques and a novel fluorous-tagged palladium catalyst, we generated droplet reactors with catalytically active walls and used these compartments for small molecule synthesis.

Coupling microdroplet microreactors with mass spectrometry: reading the contents of single droplets online.

Fully integrated: Mass spectrometry has been integrated into a detection scheme for microdroplets that are created within microfluidic channels (see picture, scale bar 200 microm). This technique allows droplets to be identified based on the compounds they contain, and combines fluorescence screening with MS analysis. These experiments indicate how similar approaches can be applied to the ambitious goals of on-chip protein evolution and chemical synthesis.

Surface-induced droplet fusion in microfluidic devices.

Here we demonstrate a new method for droplet fusion based on a surface energy pattern on the walls of a microfluidic device, that does not require active elements nor accurate synchronization of the droplets.