Ultrasensitive Nanofluidic Devices for Genomic Analysis

描述(由申请人提供)： 这一合作关系将把加州理工学院应用物理和生物工程系的技术开发努力与南加州大学凯克医学院教职员工的临床需求联系起来。我们将把加州理工大学开发的纳米流体芯片技术应用于生物学和医学领域的问题。利用应用物理学和生物工程计划的综合资源，我们将开发新的纳米技术，以解决目前在芯片上进行单细胞基因组分析时存在的一些生物工程障碍。我们将开发具有操纵纳米升液体能力的微型制造芯片；这些芯片将用于执行高度并行的生化操作和稀有细胞群体的遗传分析。这些芯片将能够创造出独特的试剂，可以使用传统的功能基因组学技术进行分析。将建立一个芯片铸造厂，以生产大量的这些芯片，可以在合作者之间共享。芯片技术将用于研究以下两个特别重要的医学问题：造血干细胞中因子和标志物的发现，以及人类肠道中无法培养的病原体的发现和表征。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This partnership will bridge the technology development efforts of Caltech faculty in Applied Physics and Bioengineering with clinical needs of faculty at the USC Keck School of Medicine. We will apply technology for nanofluidic chips that has been developed at Caltech to problems of biological and medical interest. Using the combined resources of the Applied Physics and the Bioengineering programs, we will develop new nanotechnology to solve a number of bioengineering obstacles that presently exist for single cell genomic analysis on a chip. We will develop microfabricated chips with the ability to manipulate nanoliters of fluid; these chips will be used to perform highly parallel biochemical manipulations and genetic analyses of rare populations of cells. The chips will be able to create unique reagents that can be analyzed using conventional functional genomics techniques. A chip foundry will be created in order to produce research quantities of these chips that can be shared among collaborators. The chip technology will be used to investigate the following two problems of particular medical importance: factor and marker discovery in haematopoietic stem cells, and the discovery and characterization of unculturable pathogens in the human gut.