Enhancing Protease Activity Assay in Droplet-Based Microfluidics Using a Biomolecule Concentrator

We introduce an integrated microfluidic device consisting of a biomolecule concentrator and a microdroplet generator, which enhances the limited sensitivity of low-abundance enzyme assays by concentrating biomolecules before encapsulating them into droplet microreactors. We used this platform to det...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Chia-Hung, Sarkar, Aniruddh, Song, Yong-Ak, Miller, Miles Aaron, Kim, Sung Jae, Griffith, Linda G., Lauffenburger, Douglas A., Han, Jongyoon
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Chemical Society (ACS) 2012
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/73163
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1801-5548
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7215-1439
Description
Summary:We introduce an integrated microfluidic device consisting of a biomolecule concentrator and a microdroplet generator, which enhances the limited sensitivity of low-abundance enzyme assays by concentrating biomolecules before encapsulating them into droplet microreactors. We used this platform to detect ultralow levels of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) from diluted cellular supernatant and showed that it significantly (~10-fold) reduced the time required to complete the assay and the sample volume used.