Size dependent cell sorting systems and characteristic of cell groups

Tissues of multicellular organism are formed of a variety of role-different cells. Furthermore, it is known that a certain cell varies in role and size by the maturity degree. The identity of a cell may be distributed roughly by its size. For example, limbus corneae is the border of the cornea and the sclera. Some cells of corneal limbal epithelium have multipotency and high ability to proliferate, and the size of these are smaller than other epithelial cells. Therefore, we attempted to sort cells based on size with some device which is small scale device and easily operated. Hydrodynamic filtration and sorting was proposed using micro channels having T character branch points, and membrane filtration was constructed at membrane with small holes and rings. Sorted cell groups indicated different expression in gene analysis and colony forming assay every size each.