Platelets and leukocytes are important participants in thrombosis, inflammation, and immune responses, while interactions between these cells can provide useful information about disease and treatment response. Measuring platelet activation and platelet-leukocyte aggregates, however, depends strongly on how blood is processed before analysis. Conventional centrifugation requires...
Bacteriophages, or phages, are viruses that infect bacteria. They have shaped molecular biology for decades and are gaining renewed attention. However, studying how phages infect bacteria comes with technical challenges. The classic double-layer plaque assay has long been the standard method for phage quantification,...
Stand-alone microfluidic devices have been shown great promises over the past few decades in simplifying biological as well as chemical assays. However, in many applications, the processes cannot be reduced into a single task and require multiple tasks to be conducted sequentially. In this week's...
One of the major successes of microfluidic chips hinges upon cell washing and cell sorting. Various active and passive techniques such as inertial microfluidics, spiral microfluidics, magentophoresis, electrophoresis, acoustophoresis, etc. have been developed for this purpose. In this week's research highlight, we will introduce a...
Nature has always been a source of inspiration for us. Over years and years, nature has developed highly efficient mechanisms in living organisms that can light the way for designers and engineers. In this week’s research highlight, we are going to introduce a microfluidic chip...