Skip to main content

Dual-Well Microfluidic Technique for Single Cell Isolation and Long-Term Clonal Culture

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Handbook of Single Cell Technologies
  • 177 Accesses

Abstract

The clonal culture of single cells is widely used for studying cell dynamics and heterogeneity in vitro and producing monoclonal cell populations. Using traditional culture systems such as well plates to perform single cell culture experiments is of low efficiency because the Poisson distribution limits the available highest single cell event probability. Here we describe high-efficiency single cell isolation and long-term culture technique, which is based on using a microfluidic chip with a dual-well microchannel design. The utility of this technique is demonstrated with the isolation and culture of cancer and stem cells.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Bonnefoix T, Bonnefoix P, Verdiel P, Sotto JJ (1996) Fitting limiting dilution experiments with generalized linear models results in a test of the single-hit Poisson assumption. J Immunol Methods 194(2):113–119

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chartrain M, Chu L (2008) Development and production of commercial therapeutic monoclonal antibodies in mammalian cell expression systems: an overview of the current upstream technologies. Curr Pharm Biotechnol 9(6):447–467

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen HY, Sun J, Wolvetang E, Cooper-White J (2015) High-throughput, deterministic single cell trapping and long-term clonal cell culture in microfluidic devices. Lab Chip 15(4):1072–1083

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen YC, Zhang ZX, Fouladdel S, Deol Y, Ingram PN, McDermott SP, Azizi E, Wicha MS, Yoon E (2016a) Single cell dual adherent-suspension co-culture micro-environment for studying tumor-stromal interactions with functionally selected cancer stem-like cells. Lab Chip 16(15):2935–2945

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen YC, Ingram PN, Fouladdel S, McDermott SP, Azizi E, Wicha MS, Yoon E (2016b) High-throughput single-cell derived sphere formation for Cancer stem-like cell identification and analysis. Sci Rep 6:27301

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng YH, Chen YC, Brien R, Yoon E (2016) Scaling and automation of a high-throughput single-cell-derived tumor sphere assay chip. Lab Chip 16(19):3708–3717

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chung J, Ingram PN, Bersano-Begey T, Yoon E (2014) Traceable cional culture and chemodrug assay of heterogeneous prostate carcinoma PC3 cells in microfluidic single cell array chips. Biomicrofluidics 8(6):064103

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cox-Muranami WA, Nelson EL, Li GP, Bachman M (2016) Large area magnetic micropallet arrays for cell colony sorting. Lab Chip 16(1):172–181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • dos Santos ML, Quintilio W, Manieri TM, Tsuruta LR, Moro AM (2018) Advances and challenges in therapeutic monoclonal antibodies drug development. Brazi J Pharm Sci 54. https://doi.org/10.1590/s2175-97902018000001007

  • Gross A, Schoendube J, Zimmermann S, Steeb M, Zengerle R, Koltay P (2015) Technologies for single-cell isolation. Int J Mol Sci 16(8):16897–16919

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kokkaliaris KD, Drew E, Endele M, Loeffler D, Hoppe PS, Hilsenbeck O, Schauberger B, Hinzen C, Skylaki S, Theodorou M, Kieslinger M, Lemischka I, Moore K, Schroeder T (2016) Identification of factors promoting ex vivo maintenance of mouse hematopoietic stem cells by long-term single-cell quantification. Blood 128(9):1181–1192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin CH, Hsiao YH, Chang HC, Yeh CF, He CK, Salm EM, Chen CC, Chiu IM, Hsu CH (2015) A microfluidic dual-well device for high-throughput single-cell capture and culture. Lab Chip 15(14):2928–2938

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin CH, Chang HC, Hsu CH (2016) A microfluidic platform for high-throughput single-cell isolation and culture. J Vis Exp (112). https://doi.org/10.3791/54105

  • Longo PA, Kavran JM, Kim MS, Leahy DJ (2014) Single cell cloning of a stable mammalian cell line. Methods Enzymol 536:165–172

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matsumura T, Tatsumi K, Noda Y, Nakanishi N, Okonogi A, Hirano K, Li L, Osumi T, Tada T, Kotera H (2014) Single-cell cloning and expansion of human induced pluripotent stem cells by a microfluidic culture device. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 453(1):131–137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McFarland DC (2000) Preparation of pure cell cultures by cloning. Methods Cell Sci 22(1):63–66

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Noh SM, Shin S, Lee GM (2018) Comprehensive characterization of glutamine synthetase-mediated selection for the establishment of recombinant CHO cells producing monoclonal antibodies. Sci Rep 8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-23720-9

  • Pai JH, Xu W, Sims CE, Allbritton NL (2010) Microtable arrays for culture and isolation of cell colonies. Anal Bioanal Chem 398(6):2595–2604

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rettig JR, Folch A (2005) Large-scale single-cell trapping and imaging using microwell arrays. Anal Chem 77(17):5628–5634

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Revzin A, Tompkins RG, Toner M (2003) Surface engineering with poly(ethylene glycol) photolithography to create high-density cell arrays on glass. Langmuir 19(23):9855–9862

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds BA, Weiss S (1996) Clonal and population analyses demonstrate that an EGF-responsive mammalian embryonic CNS precursor is a stem cell. Dev Biol 175(1):1–13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shen FM, Zhu L, Ye H, Yang YJ, Pang DW, Zhang ZL (2015) A high throughput micro-chamber Array device for single cell clonal cultivation and tumor heterogeneity analysis. Sci Rep 5:11937

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sikorski DJ, Caron NJ, VanInsberghe M, Zahn H, Eaves CJ, Piret JM, Hansen CL (2015) Clonal analysis of individual human embryonic stem cell differentiation patterns in microfluidic cultures. Biotechnol J 10(10):1546–1554

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sun CH, Fan Y, Li J, Wang GC, Zhang HS, Xi JJ (2015) Efficient production of a gene mutant cell line through integrating TALENs and high-throughput cell cloning. J Lab Autom 20(1):46–50

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tsumoto K, Isozaki Y, Yagami H, Tomita M (2019) Future perspectives of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. Immunotherapy 11(2):119–127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang ZX, Chen YC, Cheng YH, Luan Y, Yoon E (2016) Microfluidics 3D gel-island chip for single cell isolation and lineage-dependent drug responses study. Lab Chip 16(13):2504–2512

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zheng CH, Chen GE, Pang YH, Huang YY (2012) An integrated microfluidic device for long-term culture of isolated single mammalian cells. Sci China Chem 55(4):502–507

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chia-Hsien Hsu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Yeh, CF., Chang, HC., Hsu, CH. (2020). Dual-Well Microfluidic Technique for Single Cell Isolation and Long-Term Clonal Culture. In: Santra, T., Tseng, FG. (eds) Handbook of Single Cell Technologies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4857-9_26-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4857-9_26-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-4857-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-4857-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EngineeringReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

Publish with us

Policies and ethics