Pulsatile reverse flow actuated microfluidic injector: toward the application for single-molecule chemotropism assay

Microfluidic sample plug injection often relies on electrokinetic means which restrict the application of this technology to biological studies involving living cells. Here, we present a microfluidic injector device that is coupled with a cell culture chamber for chemotropic pollen tubes in order to study the directional cellular growth triggered by ligand-receptor interactions at single molecule resolution. In the reported device, unidirectional fluidic flow is introduced by a syringe pump, and a temporal change in the flow direction that is required for a sample plug injection is realized by operating an on-chip electro-osmotic pump that generates pulsatile reverse flow. A fraction of an injected sample plug can be transferred to the cell culture chamber in a controlled manner, which potentially allows us to study the cellular responses to an injected ligand at high spatiotemporal resolution.