Tiny Guillotine Slices Cells Fast

Can a single-celled organism hold a key to developing self-healing materials and machines? A Stanford University mechanical engineer is exploring this intriguing possibility, using a new tool that also has applications 

Researchers at Stanford have created a new tool for cutting cells, called a microfluidic guillotine. This eight-channel version of their tool can cut cells over 200 times faster than conventional methods. Image credit: L.A. Cicero/Stanford Universityin many kinds of cellular research.

Sindy Tang, an assistant professor, discovered that trumpet-shaped Stentor coeruleus can regenerate into two cells when divided in half. She calls self-healing as “one of the Holy Grails of engineering…A single cell is analogous to a spacecraft — both have to figure out how to repair damage without anyone’s help from the outside.”

Before Tang and her team could study S. coeruleus’ regenerative powers, they needed a tool to slice the cells in half. Researchers working on the organism usually cut cells by hand under a microscope, using a glass needle. This method is 100-years old and difficult to execute to obtain two identical cell halves. Lucas Blaugh, a Tang graduate student, estimated that a researcher would take five hours to cut 100 cells. When the 100^th cell was cut, the first one cut would be healing.

Microfluidics is one of Tang’s team’s specialties, and they used their expertise to design a better slicing mechanism — a cellular guillotine that halves cells in an assembly-line process. The device pushes a row of cells into a tight channel and onto a pointed knife blade. The guillotine slices S. coeruleus into perfect halves with similar survival rates to those of the laborious hand-cutting method.

The team joined eight identical parallel channels to increase their cutting rate. They produced 150 cells in two minutes, a whopping increase over the hand method.

Tang expects the guillotine will be useful for many scientists who study self-healing, whether with a goal of creating self-healing materials or treating diseases like cancer. Her team reports its results in the June 27 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.