Download or read book Robotic Manipulation and Characterization of Cells for Drug Screen and Clinical IVF Applications written by Jun Liu and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heterogeneity is the hallmark of cell biology. Robotic system and automated methods are required for characterization and manipulation of a large number of single cells for many important applications, such as characterizing cell-cell communication for screening drug effects, processing oocytes or embryos for cryopreservation, and analyzing sperm locomotion behavior for selection of a high-quality sperm for in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, current robotic characterization and manipulation systems have two major limitations in search-and-locating end-effector tips and determination of relative Z position between end-effector tips and single cells. This research has addressed these two limitations by developing an auto-locating end-effector tip method and two vision-based contact detection algorithms. By integrating the two new solutions, I have built two robotic system prototypes for microinjection of a large number of adherent cells and automatically processing oocytes or embryos for vitrification. The robotic microinjection system enabled automated gap junction measurement for repurposing antiarrhythmic drugs to identify optimal treatments for cardiac arrhythmias by assessing each drugâ s efficacy on rescuing/enhancing gap junctions. Robotic vitrification relieves human operators from tedious and difficult manual steps, eliminating operator errors and inconsistencies. It also offers unparalleled timing control based on real-time embryo volume monitoring. Automation enables the system to process multiple oocytes/embryos with high efficiency. In addition, automated methods were developed to quantitatively analyze sperm locomotion behaviors by tracking both sperm head and tail. Experimental results on automated sperm analysis revealed a significant correlation between sperm head velocity and tail beating amplitude. By combining automated sperm motility analysis with DNA assessment technique, this research offers a new solution for identifying single sperms of high quality for IVF applications. In the end, this research also reviewed future research directions in microsystems and nanoengineering for intracellular measurement and manipulations and discussed the promising research for the intracellular study.