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

生物领域的最新进展提高了人们对可靠技术的兴趣和需要，这些技术可大规模用于通过将遗传物质插入胚胎、细胞质内精子注射、基因治疗和其他有关领域来创造转基因生物。虽然其中一些过程已经自动化，但许多过程，例如向悬浮细胞（即胚胎）注射物质，是由高技能工人使用显微镜和手动控制的微型机器人手动进行的。尽管技术高超，但这些工人的成功率相对较低，这被认为是由于控制插入速度和施加在生物细胞上的力以及人类手动控制的可变性面临重大挑战。为了满足当前对这些工艺的需求，需要提高机械细胞注射、电穿孔和细胞处理的速度。因此，有必要研究注入器速度、施加在细胞壁上的力、注入器回缩速度等对细胞存活率的影响，以便能够可靠地设计自动化细胞处理系统、控制器和自动化系统来进行自动化注射。

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.