High-throughput automated injection of individual biological cells

Abstract—The ability of efficiently delivering soluable/insoluable drug compounds or biomolecules into individual biological cells and quantifying their cellular responses is important for genetics, proteomics, and drug discovery. This paper presents a fully au-tomated system for zebrafish embryo injection, which overcomes the problems inherent in manual injection, such as human fatigue and large variations in success rates due to poor reproducibility. Based on “looking-then-moving ” control, the microrobotic system performs injection at a speed of 15 zebrafish embryos (chorion un-removed) per minute. Besides a high injection speed that compares favorably with that of a highly proficient injection technician, a vacuum-based embryo holding device enables fast immobilization of a large number of zebrafish embryos, shortening the embryo patterning process from minutes to seconds. The recognition of embryo structures from image processing identifies a desired des