Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 15, 2026
10:38
Label-free Isolation and Enrichment of Cells Through Contactless Dielectrophoresis
Published on: September 3, 2013
Marker-specific sorting of rare cells using dielectrophoresis
Xiaoyuan Hu1, Paul H Bessette, Jiangrong Qian
1Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
Summary
This study introduces dielectrophoresis-activated cell sorting (DACS), a microfluidic method for high-speed cell separation. DACS achieves superior throughput, purity, and rare cell recovery by labeling target cells with specific particles.
Area of Science:
- Biotechnology
- Microfluidics
- Cell Sorting
Background:
- Current high-speed cell sorting methods face limitations in balancing throughput, purity, and rare cell recovery.
- Microfluidics offers a promising avenue to overcome these limitations through parallelized arrayed devices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop an electrokinetic sorting methodology for efficient rare cell isolation from complex mixtures.
- To decouple throughput, purity, and rare cell recovery parameters in cell sorting.
Main Methods:
- Utilized dielectrophoresis (DEP) in microfluidic channels for cell separation.
- Engineered electric fields to modulate the dielectrophoretic response of labeled rare target cells.
- Demonstrated marker-specific cell separation using DEP-activated cell sorting (DACS) for bacterial enrichment.
Main Results:
- Achieved >200-fold enrichment of rare target bacteria in a single sorting round.
- Demonstrated a single-channel throughput of 10,000 cells per second.
- Successfully separated dielectrophoretically labeled cells from unlabeled cells.
Conclusions:
- DACS enables efficient, surface marker-specific cell sorting.
- The technology offers potential for automated, disposable cell sorting systems.
- DACS simultaneously achieves high throughput, purity, and rare cell recovery.
