In:
Nature Communications, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Vol. 11, No. 1 ( 2020-05-04)
Abstract:
Microfluidics by soft lithography has proven to be of key importance for biophysics and life science research. While being based on replicating structures of a master mold using benchtop devices, design modifications are time consuming and require sophisticated cleanroom equipment. Here, we introduce virtual fluidic channels as a flexible and robust alternative to microfluidic devices made by soft lithography. Virtual channels are liquid-bound fluidic systems that can be created in glass cuvettes and tailored in three dimensions within seconds for rheological studies on a wide size range of biological samples. We demonstrate that the liquid-liquid interface imposes a hydrodynamic stress on confined samples, and the resulting strain can be used to calculate rheological parameters from simple linear models. In proof-of-principle experiments, we perform high-throughput rheology inside a flow cytometer cuvette and show the Young’s modulus of isolated cells exceeds the one of the corresponding tissue by one order of magnitude.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2041-1723
DOI:
10.1038/s41467-020-15813-9
Language:
English
Publisher:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication Date:
2020
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2553671-0
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