Performing isoelectric focusing and simultaneous fractionation of proteins on a rotary valve followed by sodium dodecyl-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis

Whole Teflon valves for handling droplets

We propose and test a new whole-Teflon gate valve for handling droplets. The valve allows droplet plugs to pass through without disturbing them. This is possible due to the geometric design, the choice of material and lack of any pulses of flow generated by closing or opening the valve. The duct through the valve resembles a simple segment of tubing, without constrictions, change in lumen or side pockets. There are no extra sealing materials with different wettability or chemical resistance. The only material exposed to liquids is FEP Teflon, which is resistant to aggressive chemicals and fully biocompatible. The valve can be integrated into microfluidic systems: we demonstrate a complex system for culturing bacteria in hundreds of microliter droplet chemostats. The valve effectively isolates modules of the system to increase precision of operations on droplets. We verified that the valve allowed millions of droplet plugs to safely pass through, without any cross-contamination with bacteria between the droplets. The valve can be used in automating complex microfluidic systems for experiments in biochemistry, biology and organic chemistry.

Ionic liquids as buffer additives in ionic liquid-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis separation of mixtures of low and high molecular weight proteins

Three novel ionic liquids (ILs) [C_nPBr] (n= 4, 6, 8) have been synthesized and were used as buffer additives in IL-PAGE separation of mixture of acidic proteins.

Droplet-based in situ compartmentalization of chemically separated components after isoelectric focusing in a Slipchip

Isoelectric focusing (IEF) is a powerful and widely used technique for protein separation and purification. There are many embodiments of microscale IEF that use capillary or microfluidic chips for the analysis of small sample volumes. Nevertheless, collecting the separated sample volumes without causing remixing remains a challenge. Herein, we describe a microfluidic Slipchip device that is able to efficiently compartmentalize focused analyte bands in situ into microdroplets. The device contains a microfluidic "zig-zag" separation channel that is composed of a sequence of wells formed in the two halves of the Slipchip. The analytes are focused in the channel and then compartmentalised into droplets by slipping the chip. Importantly, sample droplets can be analysed on chip or collected for subsequent analysis using electrophoresis or mass spectrometry for example. To demonstrate this approach, we perform IEF separation using standard markers and protein samples, with on-chip post-processing. Compared to alternative approaches for sample collection, the method avoids remixing, is scalable and is easily hyphenated with the other analytical methods.

Synthesis and thermal degradation property study of N-vinylpyrrolidone and acrylamide copolymer

A series of acrylamide (AM) and N-vinylpyrrolidone (NVP) copolymer with various NVP content were synthesised by free radical solution polymerization.