Large Electric Fields and Gradients in Microfluidics Enable Ultra-High Resolution Separations of Cells and Bioparticles

Very high-resolution separations of cells, bioparticles (exosomes, viruses, organelles) and proteins are possible by using thoughtfully shaped flow and electric fields in microfluidics systems. The short length scales enable unique capabilities and well-established fabrication schemes allow great precision. Older work focused on separating cells, to great success, such that antibiotic resistance and susceptible strains could be separated based upon only biophysical differences (no labels, no induced metabolism). More recently, viruses, exosomes (vesicles) and proteins have been separated, isolated and concentrated using the same strategy. These results suggest a new path forward for generating a better understanding of biology in general and a unique mechanism to create a distinct diagnostic platform. In one vision, cells can be purified, isolated and concentrated to homogeneity by their biophysical properties. These cells, in turn, can be lysed and the contents separated, isolated and concentrated across particle size scales from organelles to peptides, including genetic materials. The contents will be annotated to the original pure cell population. In essence a new cataloging scheme is available based on biophysics to assign phenotypes, genotypes and any other cellular property to a unique descriptor. I will present the cell, virus, exosome and protein separations data which supports this vision, and briefly describe the underlying physics which fully enables and explains the observed results. The system is deterministic and reproducible based on foundational (and simple) properties. Differentiating antibiotic resistant and susceptible bacteria strains on native cells without labels will be shown as an example of ultrahigh resolution separation. Similar capabilities will be shown for very closely related isolates for seven different species.