Microfluidic Applications in Biology: From Technologies to Systems Biology

Liquids, for example water, can change the way they behave depending on the environment around them. Equipment and machinery that make use of fluids obviously need to be designed to take into account these changes so that they can operate as efficiently as possible. Microfluidics is the area of science, combining chemistry and physics, that involves trying to understand those changes in liquids that happen when the amount of the liquid is very small.
Because many biological experiments need to be carried out on very small amounts of material, due to the huge cost of producing biological samples, there is currently a great deal of interest in understanding the microfluidics of biological samples.

Taken from the most popular, recent issues of the high–impact journal Electrophoresis, these articles on microfluidics and its application in a range of biological fields are of high interest and now available to a new readership. Alongside several review articles, this volume represents a current overview of the latest research in this rapidly growing field and discusses the potentials of microfluidic applications in different biological domains.

Niels Lion studied industrial biotechnologies and instrumentation at the Ecole Centrale de Lille and at the Université Paris XII, followed by a PhD at the Laboratory of Analytical and Physical Electrochemistry of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland). His work consists in the hyphenation of microfluidic devices with electrospray mass spectrometry, and in a broader sense in miniaturised analytical sciences for proteomics. Dr Lion is the author of 20 papers and is regularly invited as reviewer for international journals. He is also a member of the Swiss Proteomics Society committee.

Joël S. Rossier studied physical chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), followed by a Ph.D. thesis at the Laboratory of Analytical and Physical Electrochemistry (LEPA) of the EPFL. He is Chief Scientific Officer and co–founder of DiagnoSwiss SA, a microfluidic technology provider company. He co–founded the Swiss Proteomics Society and has been appointed in 2005 as external lecturer at the EPFL for bioanalytical teaching. He is member of the editorial board of ELECTROPHORESIS and NANOMEDICINE, author of more than 40 peer review research articles and reviews, 15 patent applications and several book chapters.

Hubert H. Girault studied electrochemistry at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Electrochimie et d'Electrométallurgie de Grenoble (France), followed by a PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Southampton. He was then appointed as lecturer in physical chemistry at the University of Edinburgh. In 1992, Hubert Girault became Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is currently the director of the Institute for Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the EPFL and also a co–founder of DiagnoSwiss SA. He is the author of two textbooks, more than 230 scientific publications, and more than 10 patents.