Single Cell Mass Measurement Using Drag Force Inside Lab-on-Chip Microfluidics System

Single cell mass (SCM) is an intrinsic property of single cell, it arouses a great interest among scientists as cell mass depends on the synthesis of proteins, DNA replication, cell wall stiffness, cell cytoplasm density, cell growth, ribosome, and other analogous of organisms. To date, several great strides have been taken to the advancements of SCM measurement techniques. Nevertheless, more works are required to enable the technology to push frontier in deep analysis of SCM measurement, hence to elucidate intracellular properties. In this paper, we present a lab-on-chip microfluidics system for SCM measurement, related with the force required to drag a single cell and Newton's law of motion inside microfluidics channel. Drag force on the cell was generated by a pressure driven syringe micropump and the motion of the cell was measured using optical observation under an inverted microscope. This approach of measuring SCM was calibrated using known mass (77.3 pg) of a polystyrene particle of 5.2 μm diameter. Furthermore, we used Saccharomyces cerevisiae baker's yeast cells of different sizes ( 2\mathchar"702D 7 μm diameter) for SCM measurement. Mass of 4.4 μm diameter of single yeast cell was measured as 2.12 pg which is in the range of previously reported single yeast cell mass (2-3 pg). In addition, we also studied the relation between SCM and single cell size. Results showed that single yeast cell mass increases exponentially with the increasing of single cell size.