Microfluidics is a scientific field that exists at the intersection of the fields of engineering, physics, chemistry and biotechnology. It deals with the manipulation of microlitre volumes of liquids which are processed on devices called microfluidic chips. As a result, microfluidics allows complex protocols and procedures to be performed on chips.
There are a variety of different types of microfluidic chips in existence. For example, digital, paper and centrifugal microfluidic chips are all in use today. MARS focuses on continuous flow microfluidics fabricated from polycarbonate and PDMS.
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/0/02/MARSbackground.png)
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/2/22/MARSLogo2.png)
![](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2017/c/cc/MARS_Project.png)
Overview and Introduction
Problem Statement
If a synthetic biologist would like to use microfluidics in their lab, they would follow the traditional design and manufacture workflow. This consists of three general stages divided into:
After manufacturing their device the synthetic biologist can then move onto implementation and testing. However, there are many difficulties that may arise when testing a device. For example, certain chips may require some external apparatus, such as off-chip metering or electronic components. These can vary from design to design, adding additional costs and time investment in learn how to use them.
Even after investing time and money into this microfluidics workflow, success is not guaranteed. The process may need to be repeated dozens of times to get a fully functional microfluidic chip.
These difficulties with replicating and testing microfluidic devices was experienced first-hand by the Hardware team. While replicating chips from journal articles, similarly to our synthetic biologist, we noted a distinct lack of:
This year’s iGEM Team, decided to focus on removing these barriers in the implementation stage of the workflow which led to the creation of our project MARS (Microfluidic Applications for Research in Synbio).
MARS aims to increase the accessibility and relevance of microfluidics to synthetic biology through three defined goals:
Explore our Wiki to understand more about each of these branches!
- Design
- Manufacture
- Implementation
After manufacturing their device the synthetic biologist can then move onto implementation and testing. However, there are many difficulties that may arise when testing a device. For example, certain chips may require some external apparatus, such as off-chip metering or electronic components. These can vary from design to design, adding additional costs and time investment in learn how to use them.
Even after investing time and money into this microfluidics workflow, success is not guaranteed. The process may need to be repeated dozens of times to get a fully functional microfluidic chip.
These difficulties with replicating and testing microfluidic devices was experienced first-hand by the Hardware team. While replicating chips from journal articles, similarly to our synthetic biologist, we noted a distinct lack of:
- Thorough documentation of experimental procedure
- Design specificity and access to design files
- An evaluation system to grade your device against
Our Project
The CIDAR Lab at Boston University has tackled many of these design and manufacture shortcomings with an easy to use software workflow, including last year's iGEM Hardware project Neptune, and a low-cost rapid prototyping manufacturing system Makerfluidics. However, this system does not address the barriers we had identified under “Implementation” which limits the accessibility of microfluidics to everyday synthetic biology labs.This year’s iGEM Team, decided to focus on removing these barriers in the implementation stage of the workflow which led to the creation of our project MARS (Microfluidic Applications for Research in Synbio).
MARS aims to increase the accessibility and relevance of microfluidics to synthetic biology through three defined goals:
- Increase the ease of access of microfluidics through providing
- Design chips relevant for day to day use in synthetic biology
- Create a standardised method of evaluating chip functionality
Explore our Wiki to understand more about each of these branches!