Cell trap: These microscopic structures position pairs of cells so they can be fused together.
Credit: Alison Skelley
New publications, experiments and breakthroughs in biomedicine--and what they mean.
Cellular Fusion
A microchip efficiently pairs cells to create hybrids
Source: "Microfluidic control of cell pairing and fusion"
Joel Voldman, Rudolf Jaenisch, et al.
Nature Methods 6: 147-152
Results: A microfluidic chip designed by scientists at MIT efficiently traps different cell types and pairs them so that they can be fused into hybrids, a technique that is commonly used to study biological processes and can also be used to "reprogram" cells. The chip produced successfully fused hybrids five times more efficiently than commercially available devices do.
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