A Spring in Performance: Silica Nanosprings Boost Enzyme Immobilization in Microfluidic Channels.

Enzyme microreactors are important tools of miniaturized analytics and have promising applications in continuous biomanufacturing. A fundamental problem of their design is that plain microchannels without extensive static internals, or packings, offer limited exposed surface area for immobilizing the enzyme. To boost the immobilization in a manner broadly applicable to enzymes, we coated borosilicate microchannels with silica nanosprings and attached the enzyme, sucrose phosphorylase, via a silica-binding module genetically fused to it.

Mild and Selective C-H Activation of COC Microfluidic Channels Allowing Covalent Multifunctional Coatings.

Plastics, such as cyclic olefin copolymer (COC), are becoming an increasingly popular material for microfluidics. COC is used, in part, because of its (bio)-chemical resistance. However, its inertness and hydrophobicity can be a major downside for many bioapplications.

Mild Photochemical Biofunctionalization of Glass Microchannels.

The ability to locally modify the inside of microfluidic channels with bioactive molecules is of ever-rising relevance. In this article, we show the direct photochemical coupling of a N-hydroxysuccinimide-terminated ω-alkene onto hydrogen-terminated silicon oxide, and its subsequent functionalization with a catalytically active DNAzyme. To achieve this local attachment of a DNAzyme, we prepared hydrogen-phenyl-terminated glass (H-Φ-glass) by the reaction of glass with H-SiPhCl.

A generic microfluidic biosensor of G protein-coupled receptor activation-monitoring cytoplasmic [Ca(2+)] changes in human HEK293 cells.

Cell lines expressing recombinant G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are activated by specific ligands resulting in transient [Ca(2+)] rises that return to basal levels in 30-60s. Yellow Cameleon 3.6 (YC3.