Robotics for single cell microinjection 

Microinjection into single cells in intact tissue allows the delivery of membrane-impermeant molecules such as nucleic acids and proteins is a powerful technique to study and manipulate the behavior of these cells and, if applicable, their progeny. However, a high level of skill is required to perform such microinjection and is a low-throughput and low-yield process. The automation of microinjection into cells in intact tissue would empower an increasing number of researchers to perform these challenging experiments and could potentially open up new avenues of experimentation. We have developed the Autoinjector, a robot that utilizes images acquired from a microscope to guide a microinjection needle into tissue to deliver femtoliter volumes of liquids into single cells.

Publications

G. Shull, C. Haffner, W. B Huttner, E. Taverna, S. B. Kodandaramaiah, Robotic platform for microinjection into single cells in intact tissue (under review)

BioRxiv Pre-Print: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/480004v1