Lab on a Chip
It's no bigger than a stamp packet but it has the potential to allow rapid development of a new generation of drugs and genetic engineering organisms, and to better control in-vitro fertilization.<
University Park, Pa. -- Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, according to Penn State engineers.
Flasks, beakers and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a bench top, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results -- literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail.
Like tiny Jedi knights, tunable fluidic micro lenses can focus and direct light at will to count cells, evaluate molecules or create on-chip optical tweezers, according to a team of Penn State engineers. They may also provide imaging in medical devices, eliminating the necessity and discomfort of moving the tip of a probe.
Researchers at Uppsala University have developed a new tool that makes it possible to study the signals in the body that control the generation of blood vessels.
With a microscope and computer monitor, researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., watch fluorescent bacteria flow through tiny, fluid highways on a dime-sized lab on a chip. Lab-on-a-chip technology allows chemical and biological processes -- previously conducted on large pieces of laboratory equipment -- to be performed on a small glass plate with fluid channels, known to scientists as microfluidic capillaries.
UCLA and NASA have partnered to combine the latest advances in biology and engineering at the Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration (CMISE), which officially opens on Monday, Feb. 10. CMISE will meld the molecular world with aerospace technology to create minuscule monitoring systems, or a "lab on a chip," that could make research safer and more efficient on earth and in space.
