A microfluidic sensor for evaluation of solute and solvent membrane permeability in individual cells

This paper presents design, fabrication and testing of a microfluidic sensor for real time yeast cell permeability study. The device detects volume change by measuring impedances within 0.19s after mixing with different media. It achieved a detection throughput of 150 samples/second, measures impedance values at all ten electrodes at this rate and allows tracking of individual cell volume changes over a 1.3s postmixing timespan, facilitating accurate individual cell estimates of water permeability. We believe that these are the first reports of individual cell permeabilities using electrical impedance techniques and we anticipate that any mammalian cell type in RBC that has over 3 orders of magnitude change in volume, can be measured by our microfluidic sensor.