New Cell Micro-physiology Of Research

Cells provide an array of naturally evolved receptors, ion-channels, enzymes that may be targets of biological or biologically active analytes. Cell-based biosensors that treat cells as biological sensing elements have the capacity to respond to analytes in a physiologically relevant manner. Such biosensors have numerous applications including pharmaceutical screening and physiological analysis.For exploring deeply the physiological mechanism of a single living cell, it is necessary to monitor the biochemical reactions of the cell in real-time and analyze quantificationally the inside and outside microenvironment of the cell. In the 1990' s, Molecular Device Corporation invented the cytosensor, a commercial system for measuring the extracellular acidification rate (ECAR). But it can only measure the change of pH, not enough for analyzing drugs and physiology. So we present a novel microphysiometer based on MLAPS (multi-light addressable potentiometric sensor) in which different sensitive membranes are illuminated in parallel with multi-light sources at different frequencies, the response amplitude of each frequency component can be measured on-line by parallel processing algorithm.By the experiments, we can analyze the relations of the extracellular environmental H, K , Ca ions under some drugs and estimate these drugs effects. As the microphysiometer works under regular cell culture conditions, cells can be repeatedly simulated with drugs to complete dose-response curve within a few hours. With the detection of a general parameter (extruded protons and ions), the system can be used to monitor the real-time process of the cells' metabolism, observe the functional response of different kinds of membrane-bound receptors and evaluate the drugs.