Three dimensional rotation of bovine oocyte by using magnetically driven on-chip robot

In the study of the oocytes/embryos, such as enucleation, microinjection in order to increase the success ratio of the fertilization and characteristics study of the oocytes, all of these research and clinical applications involve 3-D rotation of mammalian oocytes. The gesture or the orientation of the oocyte is critical for improving the enucleation success rate, and characteristics investigation of the oocyte. Cell rotation in conventional approaches mainly are electrorotation or manual operation by skilled professionals based on trial-and-error, repeating the vacuum aspiration and release. The poor reproducibility and inconsistency entail a simple and convenient approach for single oocyte rotation. This paper reports a 3-D rotational control of bovine oocyte. By using customer designed magnetically driven microtool (MMT), the oocyte orientation control could be achieved. Comparing with the conventional works, rotation control by using MMT shows great advantage in control accuracy and the rotation speed. Orientation with an accuracy of 7°, and the average rotation velocity of 3 rad/s have been achieved. Rotation by utilizing MMT demonstrated overall out-of-plane and in-plane in a quite simple way. And by utilizing this approach, the cell manipulation for cell study becomes much easier on investigating single cell characteristics and analysis mechanism properties.