Vibrating tube sensors: A versatile and low-cost instrument for continuously monitoring the mass, volume, and density of any microgram-sized biosample in fluid

位于滨江的加州大学获得了一个奖项，以开发一种多功能和低成本的仪器，用于连续监测流体中任何微克大小的生物样品的质量、体积和密度。 为了最大限度地提高传统上在STEM领域代表性不足的群体的学生的参与度（代表UC滨江学生群体近一半的学生），该项目包括一个计划，该计划将为20名本科生提供机会，以帮助构建拟议仪器的测试版，供生物科学合作者测试。这种宝贵的职业准备培训将有助于发展多元化和具有全球竞争力的STEM劳动力。此外，通过开发一种适合其他研究人员复制和未来商业化生产的开源生物仪器设计，该项目将加强国家的研究基础设施，并为学术界和工业界之间的未来合作奠定基础。物体质量的测量在整个科学领域无处不在。但在生物科学中，许多研究对象，如细胞、微生物、鱼胚胎、昆虫幼虫、发芽种子、水凝胶、口服药物等等，都存在于液体环境中。这使得难以或不可能使用实验室天平等常规工具准确测量这些生物样品的质量。此外，许多生物样品的质量以有意义的方式变化-生物体在生长时增加质量，可生物降解的材料在溶解时失去质量，等等-并且随着时间的推移精确监测这些质量变化是非常劳动密集型的。为了解决生物学家捕捉生物现象观察能力的这些差距，该项目将开发和传播一种免费和开源的仪器设计，该仪器能够自动监测任何所需液体中任何微克大小的生物样品的质量，体积和密度，具有纳克级分辨率。 该仪器利用振动管传感器，一个简单的玻璃管在其共振频率振动。通过使流体中的毫米大小的生物样品通过该传感器，样品的质量被记录为传感器的共振频率的变化。该仪器的开发过程将由来自加州大学滨江分校的五个β测试生物科学研究实验室的反馈指导，这些实验室将在毒理学、生物材料、药物输送、昆虫学和植物科学研究中使用该仪器。其结果将是一个低成本和易于使用的仪器设计，任何生物科学研究人员都可以复制和使用，以监测任何适当大小的生物样品，在任何液体中，以全自动的方式，在任何所需的时间尺度。 这将为多样化的生物科学研究人员提供一个工具，不仅支持和加速他们现有的研究，而且还开辟了全新的技术和研究领域。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

An award is made to the University of California, Riverside, to develop a versatile and low-cost instrument for continuously monitoring the mass, volume, and density of any microgram-sized biosample in fluid. To maximize involvement of students from groups that are traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields (students who represent nearly half of the student body of UC Riverside), the project includes a program that will give 20 undergraduates the opportunity to assist with building beta versions of the proposed instrument for testing by bioscience collaborators. This valuable career-readiness training will contribute to the development of a diverse and globally competitive STEM workforce. Additionally, by developing an open-source bioinstrument design suitable for replication by other researchers and future commercial production, the project will enhance the nation’s research infrastructure and lay the foundations for future partnerships between academia and industry.Measurements of the mass of an object are ubiquitous throughout the sciences. But in the biosciences, many of the objects studied—like cells, microorganisms, fish embryos, insect larvae, sprouting seeds, hydrogels, oral pharmaceuticals, and many more—reside in a liquid environment. This makes it difficult or impossible to accurately measure the mass of these biosamples using conventional tools like laboratory balances. In addition, the masses of many biosamples change in meaningful ways—an organism gains mass as it grows, a biodegradable material loses mass as it dissolves away, and so on—and accurately monitoring these mass changes over time is very labor-intensive. To address these gaps in biologists’ ability to capture observations of biological phenomena, this project will develop and disseminate a free and open-source design for an instrument capable of automatically monitoring the mass, volume, and density of any microgram-sized biosample, in any desired liquid, with nanogram-scale resolution. The instrument utilizes a vibrating tube sensor, a simple piece of glass tubing vibrated at its resonance frequency. By passing a millimeter-sized biosample in fluid through this sensor, the mass of the sample is recorded as a change in the sensor’s resonance frequency. The instrument development process will be guided by feedback from a diverse set of five beta-testing bioscience research labs at UC Riverside who will use the instrument in toxicology, biomaterials, drug delivery, entomology, and plant science research. The result will be a low-cost and easy-to-use instrument design that any bioscience researcher can replicate and use to monitor any suitably sized biosample, in any liquid, in a fully automated manner, over any desired timescale. This will give a diverse community of bioscience researchers a tool that not only supports and accelerates their existing research but also opens up whole new techniques and areas of inquiry.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.