Tivony R, Fletcher M, Al Nahas K, Keyser UF. A Microfluidic Platform for Sequential Assembly and Separation of Synthetic Cell Models.
ACS Synth Biol 2021;
10:3105-3116. [PMID:
34761904 PMCID:
PMC8609574 DOI:
10.1021/acssynbio.1c00371]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/04/2023]
Abstract
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Cell-sized vesicles
like giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) are
established as a promising biomimetic model for studying cellular
phenomena in isolation. However, the presence of residual components
and byproducts, generated during vesicles preparation and manipulation,
severely limits the utility of GUVs in applications like synthetic
cells. Therefore, with the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology,
there is an emergent demand for techniques that can continuously purify
cell-like vesicles from diverse residues, while GUVs are being simultaneously
synthesized and manipulated. We have developed a microfluidic platform
capable of purifying GUVs through stream bifurcation, where a vesicles
suspension is partitioned into three fractions: purified GUVs, residual
components, and a washing solution. Using our purification approach,
we show that giant vesicles can be separated from various residues—which
range in size and chemical composition—with a very high efficiency
(e = 0.99), based on size and deformability of the
filtered objects. In addition, by incorporating the purification module
with a microfluidic-based GUV-formation method, octanol-assisted liposome
assembly (OLA), we established an integrated production-purification
microfluidic unit that sequentially produces, manipulates, and purifies
GUVs. We demonstrate the applicability of the integrated device to
synthetic biology through sequentially fusing SUVs with freshly prepared
GUVs and separating the fused GUVs from extraneous SUVs and oil droplets
at the same time.
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