Faster, Better, and Cheaper: Harnessing Microfluidics and Mass Spectrometry for Biotechnology

Overview

Journal RSC Chem Biol

Publisher Royal Society of Chemistry

Specialty Biology

Date 2021 Oct 27

PMID 34704041

Citations 6

Authors

Noel S Ha

Markus de Raad

La Zhen Han

Amber Golini

Christopher J Petzold

Trent R Northen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

High-throughput screening technologies are widely used for elucidating biological activities. These typically require trade-offs in assay specificity and sensitivity to achieve higher throughput. Microfluidic approaches enable rapid manipulation of small volumes and have found a wide range of applications in biotechnology providing improved control of reaction conditions, faster assays, and reduced reagent consumption. The integration of mass spectrometry with microfluidics has the potential to create high-throughput, sensitivity, and specificity assays. This review introduces the widely-used mass spectrometry ionization techniques that have been successfully integrated with microfluidics approaches such as continuous-flow system, microchip electrophoresis, droplet microfluidics, digital microfluidics, centrifugal microfluidics, and paper microfluidics. In addition, we discuss recent applications of microfluidics integrated with mass spectrometry in single-cell analysis, compound screening, and the study of microorganisms. Lastly, we provide future outlooks towards online coupling, improving the sensitivity and integration of multi-omics into a single platform.

Citing Articles

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1-Octanol-assisted ultra-small volume droplet microfluidics with nanoelectrospray ionization mass spectrometry.

Zhao Y, Park I, Rubakhin S, Bashir R, Vlasov Y, Sweedler J Anal Chim Acta. 2024; 1321:342998.

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Multiplex fluorescence detection of single-cell droplet microfluidics and its application in quantifying protein expression levels.

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A combinatorial droplet microfluidic device integrated with mass spectrometry for enzyme screening.

Ha N, Onley J, Deng K, Andeer P, Bowen B, Gupta K Lab Chip. 2023; 23(15):3361-3369.

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