: The ability to analyze individual cells rather than averaged properties over a population is a major step towards understanding the fundamental elements of biological systems. Recent advances in microbiology such as cloning demonstrate that increasingly complex micromanipulation strategies for manipulating individual biological cells are required. In this paper, a microrobotic system capable of conducting automatic embryo pronuclei DNA injection is presented. Both embryo pronuclei DNA injection and intracytoplasmic injection (cell injection) are methods of introducing foreign genetic material into cells. Conventionally, cell injection has been conducted manually, however, long training, disappointingly low success rates from poor reproducibility in manual operations, and contamination all call for the elimination of direct human involvement. The system presented is capable of performing automatic embryo pronuclei DNA injection autonomously and semi-autonomously through a hybrid visua...
Yu Sun, Bradley J. Nelson