Robotic platform for microinjection into single cells in brain tissue
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Suhasa B. Kodandaramaiah; Gabriella Shull; Elena Taverna; Wieland B. Huttner; Christiane Haffner
- Source
- EMBO reports
EMBO Reports
- Subject
- single cell manipulation
Telencephalon
Microinjections
Computer science
Neurogenesis
brain development
Methods & Resources
Cell Communication
Brain tissue
Biochemistry
Article
computer vision
Automation
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Neural Stem Cells
Autoinjector
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Genetics
medicine
Animals
Humans
Cell Lineage
RNA, Messenger
Progenitor cell
Molecular Biology
Process (anatomy)
Microinjection
030304 developmental biology
robotics
0303 health sciences
Cerebrum
Brain
Articles
Embryonic stem cell
Neural stem cell
Mice, Inbred C57BL
medicine.anatomical_structure
Single-Cell Analysis
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Neuroscience
Biomedical engineering
- Language
- ISSN
- 1469-3178
1469-221X
Microinjection into single cells in brain tissue is a powerful technique to study and manipulate neural stem cells. However, such microinjection requires expertise and is a low‐throughput process. We developed the “Autoinjector”, a robot that utilizes images from a microscope to guide a microinjection needle into tissue to deliver femtoliter volumes of liquids into single cells. The Autoinjector enables microinjection of hundreds of cells within a single organotypic slice, resulting in an overall yield that is an order of magnitude greater than manual microinjection. The Autoinjector successfully targets both apical progenitors (APs) and newborn neurons in the embryonic mouse and human fetal telencephalon. We used the Autoinjector to systematically study gap‐junctional communication between neural progenitors in the embryonic mouse telencephalon and found that apical contact is a characteristic feature of the cells that are part of a gap junction‐coupled cluster. The throughput and versatility of the Autoinjector will render microinjection an accessible high‐performance single‐cell manipulation technique and will provide a powerful new platform for performing single‐cell analyses in tissue for bioengineering and biophysics applications.