Single‐cell biology provides insights into some of the most fundamental processes in biology and promotes the understanding of life's mysteries. As the technologies to study single‐cells expand, they ...will require sophisticated analytical tools to make sense of various behaviors and components of single‐cells as well as their relations in the adherent tissue culture. In this paper, we revealed cell heterogeneity and uncovered the connections between cell adhesion strength and cell viability at single‐cell resolution by extracting single adherent cells of interest from a standard tissue culture by using a microfluidic chip‐based live single‐cell extractor (LSCE). We believe that this method will provide a valuable new tool for single‐cell biology.
Single‐cell biology: A novel method for in situ live single‐cell detachment was developed. Using this method, cell heterogeneity and the connections between cell adhesion strength and cell viability at single‐cell resolution were uncovered. It was found that single cells with high adhesion strength usually possessed a large cell area, a high amount of GSH and ATP, and a low amount of GSSG.
Cellular membranes are composed of a variety of lipids in different amounts and proportions, and alterations of them are usually closely related to various diseases. To reveal the intercellular ...heterogeneity of the lipid variation, an integrated microfluidic system is designed, which consists of droplet‐based inkjet printing, dielectrophoretic electrodes, and de‐emulsification interface to achieve on‐line single‐cell encapsulation, manipulation, and mass spectrometry (MS) detection. This integrated system effectively improves the single‐cell encapsulation rate, and meanwhile reduces the matrix interference and continuous oil phase interference to the MS detection. Using this system, the heterogeneities between the normal and cancer cells are compared, and the heterogeneity of the same cells before and after the drug treatment changed obviously, indicating that this system can be used as a promising tool for studying the link between the alterations of lipid homeostasis and various diseases.
A single cell analysis system is fabricated by combining inkjet printing, dielectrophoresis channel, asymmetrically bifurcate structure, and de‐emulsification interface coupled to nano‐electron spray ionization (ESI)‐mass spectrometry (MS) to achieve on‐line lipid profiling with a throughput of 10 droplets per minute. This integrated system effectively improves the single‐cell encapsulation rate, and meanwhile reduces the matrix interference and continuous oil phase interference to the MS detection.
Gratings, one of the most important energy dispersive devices, are the fundamental building blocks for the majority of optical and optoelectronic systems. The grating period is the key parameter that ...limits the dispersion and resolution of the system. With the rapid development of large X-ray science facilities, gratings with periodicities below 50 nm are in urgent need for the development of ultrahigh-resolution X-ray spectroscopy. However, the wafer-scale fabrication of nanogratings through conventional patterning methods is difficult. Herein, we report a maskless and high-throughput method to generate wafer-scale, multilayer gratings with period in the sub-50 nm range. They are fabricated by a vacancy epitaxy process and coated with X-ray multilayers, which demonstrate extremely large angular dispersion at approximately 90 eV and 270 eV. The developed new method has great potential to produce ultrahigh line density multilayer gratings that can pave the way to cutting edge high-resolution spectroscopy and other X-ray applications.
Amino-functionalized ionic liquid biphasic solvents present excellent absorption capacity, regeneration ability, and energy consumption savings, which make them a possible candidate for CO
2
capture. ...The kinetics and regeneration heat duty of the TETAHLys-ethanol-water system capturing CO
2
were investigated in this work. The mass transfer and kinetic parameters, including the overall reaction rate constant (
k
ov
), the reaction rate constant (
k
2
), and the enhancement factor (
E
), were assessed at diverse concentrations and temperatures. At 303.15 K, the
k
2
of CO
2
capture into the TETAHLys-ethanol-water solution was 58,907.30 m
3
kmol
−1
s
−1
. The Arrhenius equation was introduced to evaluate the relations between
k
2
and the reaction temperature, which can be presented as
k
2
,
TETAH
Lys
‐
ethanol
‐
water
=
1.9941
×
10
15
exp
−
7388.1
T
The regeneration heat duty of the novel biphasic solvent was 35.5 and 62.39% lower than those of TETAHLys-water and the benchmark monoethanolamine solution, respectively. An efficient absorption performance and lower energy requirement indicate the great potential for this application.
This work describes a microfluidic system for
extraction of a single-cell and its phosphatidylcholine analysis through mass spectrometry. This approach uncovered cellular heterogeneity among ...seemingly identical cells and provided a new platform for identification and classification of cells.
The pathological studies of cancer tissues and cell molecules could provide an early diagnosis for the treatment of cancer. In this work, we have designed a microfluidic surface extractor (MSE). The ...MSE has been coupled with electrospray mass spectrometry (extraction reagent, methanol; optimum flow rate, 0.5 mL/h) to analyze the phospholipid content of different tumor cells. Three types of cancer cell lines, including A549 cells, HepG2 cells, and U87 cells, were investigated, and the principle component analysis (PCA: linear discriminant analysis (LDA), PC1 97.2%; PC2, 2.8%) was carried out to analyze the difference in the lipid contents. The LDA revealed heterogeneity among the cancer cells. The designed MSE could have potential applications in the clinical analysis of cancer tissues.
Chemical–mechanical polishing (CMP) is widely adopted as a key bridge between fine rotation grinding and ion beam figuring in super-smooth monocrystalline silicon mirror manufacturing. However, ...controlling mid- to short-spatial-period errors during CMP is a challenge owing to the complex chemical–mechanical material removal process during surface morphology formation. In this study, the nature of chemical and mechanical material removal during CMP is theoretically studied based on a three-system elastic–plastic model and wet chemical etching behavior. The effect of the applied load, material properties, abrasive size distribution, and chemical reaction rate on the polishing surface morphology is evaluated. A microscale material removal model is established to numerically predict the silicon surface morphology and to explain the surface roughness evolution and the source of nanoscale intrinsic polishing scratches. The simulated surface morphology is consistent with the experimental results obtained by using the same polishing parameters tested by employing profilometry and atomic force microscopy. The PSD curve for both simulated surface and experimental results by profilometry and atomic force microscopy follows linear relation with double-logarithmic coordinates. This model can be used to adjust the polishing parameters for surface quality optimization, which facilitates CMP manufacturing.
Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) adhesion is essential in understanding the mechanism of metastasis. Although conventional methods for measuring adhesion strength have performed well on cell populations, ...a deeper insight into cell behavior demands new approaches for realizing non-destructive, high-resolution,
analysis of single cell adhesion. Here, we present a microfluidic method for adhesion strength analysis of single CTCs on a base layer of endothelial cells (ECs) to clarify cell-to-cell adhesion at single cell resolution. A confined flow in open space formed by a microfluidic device supplied a trypsin zone for the analysis of single cell adhesion. Tumor cell lines were used to model CTCs. This method was proved successful for extracting different types of CTCs from an endothelial cell layer to measure their adhesion strength by the time required for detachment. Moreover, we successfully uncovered the drug influence on the adhesion strength of single CTCs on ECs, which is promising in drug screening for tumor therapy. The current work reports a general strategy for cell-to-cell adhesion analysis for single cells.
The cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii, is an important insect pest of many crops around the world, and it has developed resistance to a large number of frequently used insecticides. The sublethal effects ...of insecticides not only have an environmental risk to arthropods but also have the potential to promote resistance evolution. The sublethal effects (inhibitory or stimulatory) are influenced by many factors, such as the type of insecticide, sublethal concentrations, pest species, and others. In this study, the sublethal effects of sulfoxaflor and acetamiprid on A. gossypii were compared using two field-collected populations. The results show that sulfoxaflor was more toxic than acetamiprid against A. gossypii in both populations, the LC50 concentrations of acetamiprid and sulfoxaflor were 6.35 and 3.26 times higher, respectively, for the Jinghe population than for Yarkant. The LC25 concentration of acetamiprid significantly reduced adult longevity and fecundity in exposed adults (F0) of the Jinghe population, but it had no significant effects on these factors in Yarkant. Similar inhibitory effects were found in the F1 and F2 generations, but the biological traits in the Yarkant population were significantly reduced when the parents (F0) were exposed to LC25 of acetamiprid, whereas the changes in the Jinghe population were not significant. However, sublethal sulfoxaflor showed a stimulatory effect on A. gossypii in the F0 and F1 generation; the adult fecundity and longevity of the F0 generation were significantly higher in Jinghe, while the biological traits of the F1 generation were obviously higher in Yarkant. In the F2 generation, the r and λ were significantly higher in Jinghe; meanwhile, these biological traits were reduced in Yarkant. These results indicate that sulfoxaflor and acetamiprid had different sublethal effects on A. gossypii that varied by generation. In addition, we speculate that the genetic background and the resistance levels of A. gossypii may also influence the sublethal effects. Our findings are useful for assessing the overall effects of sulfoxaflor and acetamiprid on A. gossypii.
Gastric cancer (GC) is a common malignant tumor, and patients with GC have a low survival rate due to limited effective treatment methods. Angiogenesis and immune evasion are two key processes in GC ...progression, and they act synergistically to promote tumor progression. Tumor vascular normalization has been shown to improve the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy, which in turn may be improved through enhanced immune stimulation. Therefore, it may be interesting to identify synergies between immunomodulatory agents and anti-angiogenic therapies in GC. This strategy aims to normalize the tumor microenvironment through the action of the anti-vascular endothelial growth factor while stimulating the immune response through immunotherapy and prolonging the survival of GC patients.
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