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Generation of Femtoliter Reactor Arrays within a Microfluidic Channel for Biochemical Analysis
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posted on 2012-08-07, 00:00 authored by Sadao Ota, Hiroaki Kitagawa, Shoji TakeuchiWe present a simple microfluidic method to generate high-density
femotoliter-sized microreactor arrays within microfluidic channels.
In general, we designed a main channel with many small chambers built
into its walls. After sequentially infusing aqueous solution and organic
solvent from a single tube into the device, aqueous droplets are confined
in the chambers by the solvent flow. The generated reactors are small
and stable enough for carrying out ultrasensitive biochemical assays
at single molecule levels. As a demonstration, in this paper, we optically
observed hydrolysis activity of β-galactosidase enzymatic molecules
in the reactor arrays at single molecule levels. Further, this method
has the following advantages: (1) the droplets are observable immediately
after formation and (2) its simple procedure is sufficiently robust
such that even handy infusion of the preloaded solutions is reproducible.
We believe our method provides a platform attractive to a variety
of single molecule studies and sensing applications such as clinical
diagnostics.