Microfluidic technology is a highly attractive tool that has been used in many areas of chemical and biological research. Owning to its various advantages such as low sample and reagent consumption, short analysis time, high throughput, sensitivity, and accuracy, microfluidic chip technology has become as an attractive analysis tool for a variety of biomolecules such as proteins and peptides, nucleic acid, enzymes and their inhibitors, amino acid as well as small molecules. For proteins and peptides, microfluidic chip technology can be used for studying proteomics and protein crystal structure.
Creative Biolabs is an outstanding CRO that integrates its solid knowledge in microfluidics and powerful technology platform to support a variety of microfluidic-based researches. We not only help you design an optimal microfluidic-based solution according to the purpose of your project, but also provide one-stop development and detection services to accelerate your success.
Proteomics
Although mass spectrometry (MS) is one of the most powerful and effective tools in proteomics research, it still has some limitations such as requiring a tedious sample pretreatment procedure which is time-consuming and may lead to sample loss or contamination. Microfluidic devices have a variety of advantages of low sample and reagent consumption, small dead volume, fast mixing, rapid analysis speed, high throughput, and valveless flow control, providing a powerful platform for sample handling. The microfluidic platform greatly simplifies the manual operation and improves the analysis speed and throughput by integrating multi-step pretreatment operations on a single chip. Importantly, microfluidic chip is easily coupled with MS for online use.
Li et al. (2002) have developed an integrated and modular microsystem including an automated sampler, a microfabricated device containing a large channel that integrates C18 reverse-phase packing or other types of affinity media for affinity selection of target peptides prior to electrophoretic separation and MS analysis, an array of separation channels, together with a low dead volume which can interface to nanoelectrospray MS. This microfluidic device provides an excellent platform for sample preconcentration, on-line digestion, or selective enrichment of target analytes through affinity beads. Recently, a microfluidic platform has been developed which integrates denaturation and online immobilized enzyme reactor (IMER) digestion on a glass chip. The chip has been shown an easy and fast platform for protein samples and can be combined with MS as a rapid and effective technique for proteomics analysis.
Fig. 1 HPLC-MS analysis on a microfluidic device.1,2
Protein Crystal Structure Analysis
Microfluidic technology offers many advantages for investigating protein crystallography, such as requirements of small sample volumes, high-throughput screening, and allowing control of the protein crystallization. There have two microfluidic-based protein crystallization platforms, a droplet-based method and a well-based platform. The droplet-based crystallization is a powerful technique for high-throughput screening and the formation of a single crystal, which is important for protein crystallization to achieve a clear diffraction pattern by X-ray crystal structure. The well-based microfluidic platform is also an effective tool for protein crystallization and can precisely control the protein crystallization conditions by integrating valves. Furthermore, the protein crystal growth can be analyzed in microfluidic devices, which is essential for the formation of a high-diffraction quality protein crystal. Droplet-based microfluidics coupled with in situ Raman spectroscopic imaging is a useful platform for the analysis of protein crystal growth.
Services at Creative Biolabs
Creative Biolabs is an excellent and world-leading CRO who is devoted to helping our clients to design and develop top-quality microfluidic chips to promote their research. We are equipped with state-of-the-art development facilities and comprehensive expertise and have accumulated extensive experience in several important projects of microfluidic-based development and biomolecule detection. We support a range of microfluidic-related services including the development of microfluidic chips integrating various separation and analysis models and microfluidic-based detection services. Please contact us to help you design and develop the best effective microfluidic chip technologies to help you analyze peptides and proteins.
Reference
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Heiland, Josef J., et al. "On-chip integration of organic synthesis and HPLC/MS analysis for monitoring stereoselective transformations at the micro-scale." Lab on a Chip 17.1 (2017): 76-81.
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under Open Access license CC BY 4.0, without modification.
