Sadao Ota

High-throughput optofluidic particle profiling with morphological and chemical specificity

We present a method for high-throughput optofluidic particle analysis that provides both the morphological and chemical profiles of individual particles in a large heterogeneous population. This method is based on an integration of a time-stretch optical microscope with a submicrometer spatial resolution of 780 nm and a three-color fluorescence analyzer on top of an inertial-focusing microfluidic device. The integrated system can perform image- and fluorescence-based screening of particles with a high throughput of 10,000 particles/s, exceeding previously demonstrated imaging particle analyzers in terms of specificity without sacrificing throughput.

Microfluidic formation of lipid bilayer array for membrane transport analysis

We present a highly parallel and reproducible method for reconstituting an array of lipid bilayers to analyze membrane transport. We infuse buffer/lipid/buffer solutions sequentially into a microchannel with numerous microchambers in its walls and seal each chamber by a lipid bilayer containing membrane proteins. Due to the small volume of the chamber (2 pL), membrane transport of confined fluorescent molecules across the bilayer through the proteins is readily observed as changes in fluorescent intensity. We successfully perform quantitative measurement of the transport flux of fluorescent molecules (calcein) through alpha-hemolysin antibiotic pores.

Generation of femtoliter reactor arrays within a microfluidic channel for biochemical analysis.

We present a simple microfluidic method to generate high-density femotoliter-sized microreactor arrays within microfluidic channels. In general, we designed a main channel with many small chambers built into its walls. After sequentially infusing aqueous solution and organic solvent from a single tube into the device, aqueous droplets are confined in the chambers by the solvent flow. The generated reactors are small and stable enough for carrying out ultrasensitive biochemical assays at single molecule levels. As a demonstration, in this paper, we optically observed hydrolysis activity of β-galactosidase enzymatic molecules in the reactor arrays at single molecule levels. Further, this method has the following advantages: (1) the droplets are observable immediately after formation and (2) its simple procedure is sufficiently robust such that even handy infusion of the preloaded solutions is reproducible. We believe our method provides a platform attractive to a variety of single molecule studies and sensing applications such as clinical diagnostics.

High-throughput time-stretch microscopy with morphological and chemical specificity

Particle analysis is an effective method in analytical chemistry for sizing and counting microparticles such as emulsions, colloids, and biological cells. However, conventional methods for particle analysis, which fall into two extreme categories, have severe limitations. Sieving and Coulter counting are capable of analyzing particles with high throughput, but due to their lack of detailed information such as morphological and chemical characteristics, they can only provide statistical results with low specificity. On the other hand, CCD or CMOS image sensors can be used to analyze individual microparticles with high content, but due to their slow charge download, the frame rate (hence, the throughput) is significantly limited. Here by integrating a time-stretch optical microscope with a three-color fluorescent analyzer on top of an inertial-focusing microfluidic device, we demonstrate an optofluidic particle analyzer with a sub-micrometer spatial resolution down to 780 nm and a high throughput of 10,000 particles/s. In addition to its morphological specificity, the particle analyzer provides chemical specificity to identify chemical expressions of particles via fluorescence detection. Our results indicate that we can identify different species of microparticles with high specificity without sacrificing throughput. Our method holds promise for high-precision statistical particle analysis in chemical industry and pharmaceutics.