Cell survival rate in automated cell injection and development of automated injection system

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Recent advances in biological fields have heightened the interest and need for reliable techniques which may be carried out on a large scale for the creation of transgenic organisms through insertion of genetic material into embryos, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, gene therapy and other related areas. While some of these processes have been automated, many, such as injection of material into suspended cells, i.e. embryos, are carried out manually by highly skilled workers using microscopes and manually controlled micro-robots. Although highly skilled, the success rate achieved by these workers is relatively low, thought to be due to the significant challenges to control insertion speeds and forces applied to biological cells, and variability of human manual control. Increases in throughput to meet current demand for these processes requires higher speeds for mechanical cell injection, electroporation and cell handling. Hence there exists a need to examine the effect of injector speeds, forces imparted on cell walls, injector retraction speeds, etc. on cell survival rates to be able to reliably design automated cell handling systems, controllers and automated systems to carry out automated injection.