A biological analogue of thin layer chromatography plates for purifying cells is reported. Using only micropatterned culture dishes to direct cell migration, mammalian cells autonomously sort themselves based on their relative motility without pre-labelling, gradients, external fields, nor mobile phases. We successfully sort mixtures of same kind of cells expressing different proteins, e.g., 3T3 fibroblasts that express constitutively active Rac1 (CA-Rac1) or RhoA (CA-Rho); two different cell types, e.g., 3T3 fibroblasts and SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells and cancer and non-cancer cells, e.g., MCF10-A and MCF-7.  Homogeneous population of endothelial cells can be sorted to investigate the clonal variations.  The method for fractionating fast and slow cells can be a useful tool in investigating signaling pathways related to migration.

Planar cell chromatography

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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