Perhaps the breakthrough occurred while the University of Michigan team was whistling while they worked on improvements to microfluidic devices. They have found musical notes to provide the mechanism for moving super small samples into and through the analytical equipment, hailing a major advancement in the efficiency and simplicity of this up-and-coming category of machinery.
Microfluidic technology, which appeared in the early 1990s, involves the incorporation of extremely small volumes of fluid with chip technology. The most commercially viable and familiar example is the ink jet printer you’re likely to have in your home and office. Their additional application in an array of health and life sciences — analysis of proteins, DNA, pathogens, and such — has allowed scientists to draw big findings from very small sample volumes.
The drawback so far has been all those pesky, tiny tubes. Dividing an incredibly small fluid sample into even smaller portions for analysis by different microchips has involved a network of very small, complex tubing, typically made of silicone or glass, and these are prone to failure.
The improvement developed by the Michigan team promises a dramatic simplification. Micro-piping of set length responds to precisely one musical note by effecting a change in air pressure that allows conveyance of the sample. This reduces mechanical complexity by doing away with the cumbersome series of hoses, valves, and circuitry.
The result is not simply a device that responds to the sound of one musical tone by efficiently delivering just the right number of microliters of sample to the correct analytical chip; it can respond to a multi-note chord by delivering a correctly subdivided sample to multiple chips housed within the same device.
Lifting a bunsen burner into the air, I say: Rock on, lab geeks!
Photo courtesy of wlodl, via Flickr.