Transforming fluorescence spectrometers into costeffective, portable devices provides the potential for field-based applications in biological, environmental, and clinical research and education. However, the majority of developed spectroscopic technologies continue to require heavy, expensive equipment and trained personnel for operation or do not support multispectral analysis, thereby restricting their use in resource-limited environments. Herein, we report a wireless, portable, cost-effective, opensource fluorescence spectrometer (OpenFS) developed by compactly assembling optical and electronic elements in a 3Dprinted housing. OpenFS outputs an accurate emission spectrum over a wide range of wavelengths and demonstrates greater sensitivity for fluorescence quantification compared to a conventional fluorometer. We demonstrate the functionality of OpenFS as a fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-based DNA sensor by detecting target DNA molecules with FRET efficiency and prove its utility as an Internet of Things device by performing wireless measurements and spectral analysis on a smartphone with a custom-developed Android application. This portable open-source spectrometer can lead to new opportunities in research and educational fields where fluorescence spectroscopy has not been available because of its cost and size and provides the potential for the development of mobile diagnostics platforms.
One-step purification of white blood
cells (WBCs) is essential
to automate blood sample preparation steps for WBC analysis, but conventional
methods such as red blood cell (RBC) lysis and density-gradient centrifugation
typically require harsh chemical or physical treatment, followed by
repeated manual washing steps. Alternative microfluidic separation
methods show limited separation performances due to the trade-off
between purity and throughput. Herein, an integrated microfluidic
device is developed to decouple the trade-off by synergistically combining
a slant array ridge-based WBC enrichment unit as a throughput enhancer
and a slant, asymmetric lattice-based WBC washing unit as a purity
enhancer. The enrichment unit can maintain a high sample-infusion
throughput while lowering the flow rate into the washing unit, thus
enabling WBC-selective washing without significant influence by the
overwhelming number of RBCs and inertial forces. The device delivers
efficient separation performances by rejecting 99.9% of RBCs as well
as 99.9% of blood plasma from canine and human whole blood in a single
round of purification at a high throughput of 60 μL/min. The
purified WBC population well preserves the composition of lymphocyte
subpopulations, the major components of the adaptive immune system,
thus providing the potential for the integrated device to be used
as an essential sample-preparation tool for immunologic investigations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.