Thank you to the student organizing committee for a great Frontiers in Biophysics meeting at UBC!

With these improvements, they showed sustained sorting at 300 Hz and sorting of >1,000,000 DEs in 1 hour. We anticipate that this is a critical step towards regular implementation of DEs + FACS for large-scale protein engineering screens! (5/n).

To address this, they first systematically optimized surfactants to maximize DE stability and minimize leakage. Next, they optimized FACS loading by testing different tubes & the addition of a 3D printed 'corkscrew' mixer designed to keep DEs in suspension. (4/n)

Preprint alert! Interested in high-throughput microfluidic droplet screening? Read on for more about postdocs Samuel Thompson & Zijian (ZJ) Yang's (from the Soh lab) paper demonstrating successful FACS sorting double emulsions at rates of 1,000,000/hour (!) (1/n)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Apply now for the GRC & GRS on Microfluidics! We're spotlighting Hee-Sun Han! The Han lab innovates high-resolution omics technologies & data science to understand how molecular processes converge to shape systems-level phenotypes.

Abstracts due 2/23!
lnkd.in/dhcuAHtq
lnkd.in/dH9Qtx2T

Samuel showed that it's possible to express lipase enzymes in the aqueous compartment (using cell-free protein synthesis) that cleave a fluorogenic substrate that partitions into octanol and screen based on fluorescence (3/n):

These 'triple emulsions' are made up of an aqueous/octanol emulsion surrounded by a thin oil shell, making it possible to efficiently sort these droplets based on fluorescence using standard FACS machines (2/n):