Mosquito

Venture Category: Scientific Instruments

Community: Sensorica

This venture is looking for an animator

Objectives

Commercialize the Mosquito


The Mosquito is a scientific device used to measure force/displacement in for biomedical applications.

This system uses cantilevers or optical fiber-based sensors.

Specs for the optical fiber sensors

  • The transducer is only 125 microns in diameter and tens to hundreds of microns long.

  • It can measure μN-range forces and μm-range displacements, transversal to the length of the sensor.

  • The temporal resolution can be set in the sub-ms range.

  • It offers a great miniaturization path.

  • It is very low cost and can be made disposable.

Description

Mechanical properties of biological systems, as well as the processing of biomechanical stimuli by these systems have become essential for our overall understanding of cells and organs. We offer an improved, turnkey, user friendly and high throughput method for probing dynamic mechanical properties at the cellular level.

Micro and nano technology have recently opened the possibility for probing biomechanical properties of cells and their microenvironments. Cells process mechanical cues that in turn drive their functions, growth, differentiation, development, spatial migration, collective organization, etc. Our understanding of the microscopic biomechanical aspects of cells and organs is already coming to fruition, generating new disease and diagnostic paradigms. It is important to design new methods and instruments able to support the growing interdisciplinary work in this field, not only for fundamental scientific research, but also for clinical studies and diagnosis.

We propose an improved method for probing dynamic mechanical properties of biological systems. This method is based on a turnkey, high throughput and user-friendly system, at its core having an optical fiber-based force transducer. It is conceived to assist researchers and clinicians with minimal technical knowledge about its governing principles. The system can easily interface with other measurement methods. It greatly improves throughput of experimentation, it is easily adaptable for a great variety of samples, and it allows greater freedom for sample preparation and manipulation, as well as for the control of environmental conditions.

Contents

Communication and coordination

Communication channels

Coordination tools

Planning

Status: Starting new prototype

Needs

Notes

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[October 2020 - Tibi] Nicanor, a Research Associate at McGill University, recently joined the project to develop an open source force measurement system for Drosophila muscles.


... currently transferring information from the old website.

Documentation repository


LabView program for the Mosquito sensor.

Needs: equivalent in μManager, an open source integration platform

Incentives

Describe all layers of incentives...

Governance

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