Stanford’s “Nanostraws” for Cell Sampling
April 4, 2017 | Terry Sharrer
To find out what chemical reactions are going on within a cell, the most common method is to burst the cell’s membrane with a detergent. But Stanford University researchers believe they have a better, non-destructive, method for that purpose called “nanostraw extraction.” After isolating a stem cell, for example, the researcher place the cell on a gumball sized device with nanostraws that are 600x smaller than a human hair. If this piece is accurate, the nanostraws draw out cytoplasm through the membrane’s gap junctions without killing the cell. MORE
Image Credit: Stanford University and MDTMag.com