JPS6213002Y2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an apparatus for measuring the electrophoretic mobility of relatively large suspended objects such as cells in a solution.

By biologically processing cells such as white blood cells or lymphocytes, for example by feeding them with cells of other species, it is possible to detect subtle differences in the preyed cells by measuring their mobility in electrophoresis. There are cases. Although the present invention is an apparatus that can be used in such cases, it is of course not limited to cell electrophoresis. Devices of this type have already been proposed.
The principle is to apply an electric field to a suspension of cells, illuminate the suspension with strong light, and measure the movement of cells that appear glowing under a microscope. This method has been proposed.

However, when actually measuring the electrophoretic mobility of relatively large floating objects such as cells, the sedimentation movement of the floating objects due to gravity cannot be ignored. In the previously proposed device, an electrophoresis tube placed horizontally is viewed from the lateral direction using a microscope, and a microscopic image of floating substances is focused on a grid having vertical grid lines, and the amount of light transmitted through the grid is determined by moving the image. This configuration removes the influence of movement in the direction of sedimentation, but there are images of some floating objects crossing one grid line. In addition, since the number of particles and the migration speed of each particle are not constant, it is quite troublesome to analyze fluctuations in the amount of transmitted light and find the mobility. The present invention proposes another means for eliminating the influence of the movement of floating objects in the direction of settling, thereby alleviating the problems of the previously proposed devices.

The main content of this invention is to place an electrophoresis tube horizontally and observe the movement of floating particles from below using a microscope. The present invention will be explained below with reference to Examples.

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment of the present invention. Reference numeral 1 denotes an electrophoresis tube which is placed horizontally and has electrodes 2 and 3 inserted at both ends. Reference numeral 4 denotes an enlarged projection lens arranged below the electrophoresis tube 1, and its optical axis is vertical. 5 is a laser light source placed on the side of the electrophoresis tube 1;
Electrophoresis tube 1 in horizontal direction through condensing lens system 6
is lighting. The condensing lens system 6 condenses the laser beam into a plate shape and illuminates the vicinity of r/1.4 (r is the inner radius of the electrophoresis tube 1) below the center line of the electrophoresis tube 1. In consideration of refraction at the point of incidence of the light into the tube 1, the beam direction of the light source 5 is tilted slightly from the side so that the light beam has a horizontal plate shape in the illumination area. With this configuration, the magnifying projection lens 4 looks at the area illuminated by the plate-shaped light beam. Below the lens 4, a light-receiving element 7 in which minute photoelectric elements such as a one-dimensional array light-receiving element are arranged in a line is arranged at a position where an image of the portion illuminated by the light beam is formed. It is desirable that the thickness of the above-mentioned plate-shaped illumination light beam be limited to about 0.2 mm.

FIG. 2 shows an enlarged view of the portion of the electrophoresis tube 1 that is illuminated by the above-mentioned plate-shaped light flux, where F is the plate-shaped light flux and P is the floating particle. Floating particles P are electrophoresing in the direction of the arrow x and are moving in the direction of the arrow y.
It is sinking in the direction. As a result, the particles P diagonally cross the plate-shaped light beam F, and an image is formed on the array light receiving element 7 while the particles P cross the plate-shaped light beam F. Since the floating particles move about 0.2 mm in the optical axis direction of the magnifying projection lens 4 while passing through the plate-shaped light beam F, the focus state of the image on the light receiving element 7 changes, but the floating particles P on the light receiving element 7 It is convenient for analyzing the output of the light receiving element 7 if the image is formed over two to three unit elements constituting the light receiving element 7, so changes in the focus state do not have to be a problem.

With the above-described configuration, the floating particle image on the array light receiving element 7 moves on the array light receiving element at a speed corresponding to the speed in the x direction, that is, the electrophoresis direction. The output of the array element 7 read out and recorded at a certain time is designated as a in FIG. 3. In this figure, each peak corresponds to an image of a suspended particle. A record of the readout output of the array element 7 after t hours from the above time is shown in FIG. 3b. The recording of b is similar to the recording of a shifted to the right by N unit elements of the array element 7.
Shift the record of b by one unit element of the array element to the left and overlap it with the record of a, and find the number of shifts N when the peaks of many particle images can be seen to be best overlapped overall. Since .times..times..times..times..times..times..times.t represents the average distance traveled by the images of a large number of floating particles on the array element 7 during time t, the mobility of the floating particles can be determined from this.

The electrophoresis device of the present invention has the above-mentioned configuration and observes suspended particles with a lens system whose line of sight is in the direction of sedimentation, so sedimentation motion does not appear in the lateral movement of the image of the optical system, but movement due to electrophoresis is detected. can do. In the method of observing suspended particles from the horizontal direction, if the field of view of the floating particle image is made long in the horizontal direction and narrow in the vertical direction, the particle image will quickly go out of the field of view due to sedimentation movement, so the field of view is It requires a considerable width, and you will observe many floating particles traveling in parallel. On the other hand, according to the present invention, the floating particle image does not immediately leave the field of view due to sedimentation movement, so the field of view is long and narrow in the electrophoresis direction, and the width can be arbitrarily narrowed. Images traveling in a line will be observed, and the degree of mobility can be easily determined from the correlation between two signals obtained at a time interval as shown in FIG.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a perspective view of an embodiment of the device of the present invention;
The figure is an enlarged side view of the above-mentioned main part, and FIG. 3 is an output signal waveform diagram of the array element. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1... Electrophoresis tube, 2, 3... Electrode, 4... Magnifying projection lens, 5... Laser light source, 6... Condensing lens system, 7... Array light receiving element.

Claims (1)

[Scope of utility model registration request] An electrophoresis measuring device in which an electrophoresis tube is arranged horizontally, the electrophoresis tube is illuminated from the side, and an image of suspended particles is formed by a magnifying projection lens having an optical axis in the vertical direction.