LINAS MAŽUTIS
Research Professor
Research ID: A-5408-2012
Division of Microtechnologies
Institute of Biotechnology
Email:
Phone: +370 693 19333
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
Over the last few years, microfluidics have been established as an enabling technology in biological and biomedical sciences. Using droplet microfluidics technology highly monodisperse, aqueous droplets are generated in an inert carrier oil, and each droplet functions as an independent micro-scale reactor. In other words, each droplet is the equivalent of a well (or tube), yet the volume of a droplet is roughly a thousand to a million times smaller. Obviously, such significant reduction in reaction volume provides huge savings in reagent costs, when performing large numbers of reactions in a massively-parallel fashion. Furthermore, unlike the conventional microtiter plates or valve-based microfluidics, droplets are intrinsically scalable: the number of reaction “wells” is not limited by the physical dimensions of the chip but scales linearly with the emulsion volume. Different microfluidic modules can be employed to manipulate droplets in a sophisticated, yet highly controllable manner, therefore opening new opportunities for biology-related research. Our lab members are working at the interface of biology and biochemistry, physics and chemistry, engineering and computational biology and together we are developing novel microfluidic tools and molecular biology assays to address fundamental questions in cell biology and biomedicine. In 2020, our group members have collaborated with Harvard University, ETH Zurich, Helsinki University and MSKCC to advance single-cell biology research in cancer, immunology and beyond.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- Morello, F. et al. Molecular fingerprint and developmental regulation of the tegmental GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons derived from the anterior hindbrain. Cell Rep. 2020, 33: 108268.
- Leonaviciene, G., Leonavicius, K., Meskys, R. & Mazutis, L. Multi-step processing of single cells using semi-permeable capsules. Lab Chip. 2020, 20: 4052–4062.
- Chi, Y. et al. Cancer cells deploy lipocalin-2 to collect limiting iron in leptomeningeal metastasis. Science. 2020, 369: 276–282.
- Gegevicius, E., Goda, K. and Mazutis, L. 2020. Book chapter: Droplet Gene Analysis – Digital PCR. In: Droplet Microfluidics, pp. 89–121.
- Patents: EP3299469B1, US10596541B2, EP2941642B1, US10710073B2, EP3402594B1.