Due to the complexity of eukaryotic system, cells display strong heterogeneous behaviors even under seemingly identical environmental conditions. Thus the obscure population-averaged experimental results have become questionable when fundamental inquiries about individual cell heterogeneity were raised up, such as stem and precursor cell differentiation, carcinogenesis, etc. In this study, both extra- and intra- cellular pH and temperature were investigated, for their crucial functions in mediating a variety of cell responses to external stimuli. Here, a fiber-optic based high-resolution pH sensor and an optical resonator based high-resolution temperature sensor, both coupled with fast/remote sensing capability were firstly designed, fabricated and validated. The pH sensor is composed of a single mode optical fiber (Corning SMF-28) taper connected spherical probing head (10 - 40 �m) that has been covalently doped with a pH sensitive dye (BCECF) through amide bond on ultra-thin aerogel porous film. The temperature sensor is composed of a tapered-shaped optical-fiber sensor attached with a micro-sized optical resonator and a temperature-sensitive QD equipped sensing head. Real-time sensing capability has been acquired in both sensors. A pH resolution of about 0.05 ~ 0.1 and a temperature resolution of about 0.25�C were acquired with sufficient reproducibility. The detailed results will be presented at the conference. This project was supported by NIH (1R21GM104696-01).

Novel fiber-optic taper-based pH and temperature sensors for single cell measurement

248th National Meeting (2014)

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