Robotic donor cell injection in Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT)

Donor cell injection is a significant technique in nuclear transfer and many other biological operations. Recent achievements in biology and biomedicine demonstrate great potential of these micromanipulation technologies. Traditionally, these operations are done manually, which require high professional skills and are of low repeatability. To overcome these disadvantages, automatic operation of this procedure is required. This paper presents a robotic donor cell injection process in Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT). In this process, some techniques including target somatic cell selection, motion control of the injection pipette and the somatic cell, and oocyte penetration are discussed. Finally, experiments are conducted, and the results show that the proposed operating process is capable of performing donor cell injection with comparable speed of human operators. Over 98% detection success rate and 3 um positioning error verify practicability and applicability of the robotic donor cell injection procedure.