High-throughput multiplexed fluorescence-activated droplet sorting

Fluorescence-activated droplet sorting (FADS) is one of the most important features provided by droplet-based microfluidics. However, to date, it does not allow to compete with the high-throughput multiplexed sorting capabilities offered by flow cytometery. Here, we demonstrate the use of a dielectrophoretic-based FADS, allowing to sort up to five different droplet populations simultaneously. Our system provides means to select droplets of different phenotypes in a single experimental run to separate initially heterogeneous populations. Our experimental results are rationalized with the help of a numerical model of the actuation of droplets in electric fields providing guidelines for the prediction of sorting designs for upscaled or downscaled microsystems.Bioanalysis: microfluidic-sorters to make better choicesDroplet-based microfluidics provides new technologies for cell screening by steering cell-containing microdroplets of interest into different channels at the kilohertz frequency. Until now, in conventional microfluidic sorting, droplets are sorted using electric pulses to move them into one of the two channels. Jean–Christophe Baret from the CNRS and University of Bordeaux in France, Valérie Taly from the CNRS and University of Paris Descartes and Tobias Schneider from EPFL in Switzerland have now boosted dielectrophoretic droplet manipulation to allow for multiple selections in a single device. The teams show how emulsified dye-loaded microdroplets are sorted in five different channels depending on fluorescence intensity: a computer algorithm controls the application of electric pulses to direct the droplets into one of the five channels depending on the fluorescence signals. Numerical models unravel the effect of the dielectrophoretic actuation on the droplet trajectories and are now used to predict the sorting conditions for droplet volumes compatible with single-cell encapsulation.