A micromachined analysis system for rapid protein identification

摘要

A microfabicated flow-through analysis system for rapid protein identification is presented. The system facilitates rapid enzymatic digestion of proteins, on a porous silicon immobilized protease microreactor and on-line picoliter sample preparation, by micro-dispensing of the sample into microchip vials for matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) analysis. The generated peptide map is used for database identification of the parent protein. This system enables automated analysis of 100 protein samples to be performed in 5 hours. Kinetic studies on the micro-reactors are reported and application of this system for identifying model proteins, such as lysozyme, with high sequence cover is shown.