The Design Of Cell Electro-fusion Principium Chip Based On SOI & Basic Experiment Research In Cell Alignment And Cell-fusion

Cell fusion technology is also called as cell hybridization, protoplast fusion or somatic hybridization. It applys mediating and culturing methods to let two or more cells merge into a hybrid cell in an asexual way. This hybrid cell will obtain new genetic or biological properties, which can be used for the development of new species, strains or cell products. The development of cell fusion technology has gone through three stages: biological, chemical and physiccal inducement. In 1980s, a new physical way - cell electrofusion was developed. In comparison with the traditional cell fusion method, the cell electrofusion technology has many advantages such as high efficiency, easy operation, no contamination and visual fusion process. However, there are still some problems (such as high voltage required) in the traditional cell electro-fusion method, which hindered the integration and portability of this device for wider use. In this thesis, a MEMS-baed new design is presented for making a high-throughput cell electrofusion principium chip, which can implement electrofusion in a low-voltage condition. Its essence is on the using microchannel to shorten the distance between electrode pair, and decreasing the requirement of voltage during the fusion.The main work in this paper is to provide a new design on cell electrofusion chip and fabricate some chips for experimental research. Meanwhile, a platform for cell alignment and cellfusion experiments is also constructed, and several correlative experiments have been done, including:â‘ The cell alignment experiment based on cell dielectric electrophoresis;â‘¡The cell fusion expreiment on cell electrofusion chip.The results from the first experiment show that the geometry of chip has great influence on cell alignment and cell chains are obviously formed under the dielectrophoretic force. In the second experiment, the fusion phenomena have been observed.All the above results validate that the new design of electrofusion chip proposed in this thesis can implement cell fusion. It is a good base for the improved cell electrofusion chip and the enhancement of the cell fusion efficiency.