Rapid additive-free bacteria lysis using traveling surface acoustic waves in microfluidic channels

Abstract

We introduce a microfluidic device that uses traveling surface acoustic waves to lyse bacteria with high efficiency. This lysis method should be applicable to a wide range of bacteria species and can be modified to analyze individual bacteria cells.

Review of Microfluidic Methods for Cellular Lysis

“…It was shown that when the cells were pretreated with divalent cation (Ca + or Mg + ) the efficiency of the osmotic shock method could be improved to 75%. [104]. The lysis chip consists of a PDMS microchannel plasma-bonded to a lithium niobate (LiNbO3) substrate with an interdigitated transducer (IDT) adjacent to the microchannel to generate traveling surface acoustic waves.…”

“…If the salt concentration in the surrounding of a cell is changed so that there is a concentration difference between the inside and outside of the cell, the cell membrane becomes permeable to water due to osmosis [2,111]. If the concentration of salt is lower in [104]. The lysis chip consists of a PDMS microchannel plasma-bonded to a lithium niobate (LiNbO3) substrate with an interdigitated transducer (IDT) adjacent to the microchannel to generate traveling surface acoustic waves.…”

“…This device can effectively lyse cells without the use of lysis buffer or complex operations, so it has good potential for further integration into on-chip technologies. This technique was utilized by Lu et al [ 104 ]. The team characterized the effects of the SAW on E. coli by measuring the viability of cells exposed to the acoustic waves Figure 27 and find that about 90% are dead, about 20% of the intracellular material (nucleic acids and proteins) were successfully recovered.…”

“…Figure27. Overview of the TSAW lysis device utilized in[104]. The lysis chip consists of a PDMS microchannel plasma-bonded to a lithium niobate (LiNbO3) substrate with an interdigitated transducer (IDT) adjacent to the microchannel to generate traveling surface acoustic waves.…”

Selective cell encapsulation, lysis, pico-injection and size-controlled droplet generation using traveling surface acoustic waves in a microfluidic device

“…21 Poisson statistics do not apply to the encapsulation using these active methods, which require fewer downstream steps to improve the distribution of occupied droplets. Among these methods, generating SAWs with an interdigital transducer (IDT) allows active manipulation of both fluids and particles simultaneously on microsecond timescales, and is therefore an excellent candidate for integrating on-demand droplet generation, 21,22 encapsulation, cell lysis, 23 and pico-injection onto a single microfluidic device. 21,24 Furthermore, IDTbased TSAW microfluidics have been readily integrated with fluorescence-activated control techniques, such as fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS).…”