| Over the past decades, cell analysis system based on microfabrication technology has been gaining a strong momentum in biological science. The emergence of soft lithography technologies, in particular, drives the development of microfluidic systems at an unprecedented rate. These microfabrication facilitated systems enable precise controls of cellular microenvironment while allowing high throughput quantitative data to be captured. Single-cell based analysis system is a particularly attractive target mainly because of the limitation of existing technologies. Although still at an early stage, a number of reports have demonstrated the use of novel single-cell analysis systems to answer important biological questions regarding cancer, stem cell research, and the fundamental understanding of cell proliferation and communication.;This thesis provides a framework to identify key elements when designing a single-cell analysis system, and suggests design strategies to use as a guideline for novel system development. The key idea is that instead of attempting to establish one highly versatile platform to address as many different problems as possible, design complexity can be significantly simplified by specifically designing the tool for one proposed application. The implementation of five different single-cell analysis systems were discussed, where each of these system is catered to a specific application and take advantage of different cell manipulation and analysis techniques. The five systems included a high throughput Raman Spectroscopy based cell sampling system, a dynamic Raman profiling system catered to long-term single-cell studies, a microfluidic patch clamp array, a single-cell electroporation platform, and a cell-cell interactions investigation approach based on protein patterning. These examples illustrates that highly functional system can be established through application specific design strategies. While the applications of these systems may be independent from each other, the information obtained from them combined together would certainly help paint a better picture in cellular behaviour and system modeling. |
