Automated Adherent Cell Injection Method Based on Double-Micropipettes Operation

Microinjection of adherent cells is a technique of inserting glass pipette into adherent cells and injecting few exogenous substances into adherent cells, which is widely used in the field of cell biology. Researchers in this field usually inject adherent cells manually, however, the microinjection operation is complicated, which requires a lot of energy and takes a lot of time. The existing automated microinjection method only uses one injection micropipette to inject, compared with the manual injection method, the microinjection process is consistent not optimized, and the injection efficiency cannot be greatly improved. In this paper, an automated adherent cell injection method based on double-micropipettes operation is proposed. Firstly, the adherent cell injection process based on double-micropipettes operation is designed. Secondly, this paper solves the key technologies of automated injection of adherent cells based on double-micropipettes operation were introduced, including adherent cell detection, injection path planning and double-micropipettes operation. Finally, the experiment of adherent cell microinjection based on double-micropipettes operation, the operation of two micropipettes was carried out. The experimental results show that the success rate of injection can reach 60% and the injection speed of this method can reach 35 cells/minute, which is 75% higher than that of manual injection with single pipette (20 cells/minute) and 40% higher than that of automated adherent cell injection with single pipette (25 cells/minute).