High lane density slab gel electrophoresis by micromachined instrumentation

摘要

One of the challenges of future miniaturized biochemical analysis laboratories is to manipulate sub-μL samples in parallel fashion. Since the development and implementation of the 96-well microtiter plate technology, considerable progress hasbeen made to increase the plate density. A number of high-density formats have been developed based on the well-established 96-well format, including 386, 864, and 1536 wells. The available sample handling systems, however, are lagging due to widecenter-to-center spacing (～4.5 mm) and inability to handle sample volumes below 0.5μL. Also, these systems are capable of dispensing only 6 to 12 pipettes at one time. With the current trends of miniaturizing biochemical analysis techniques and thedrive toward the development of a Micro Total Analysis System (μTAS), techniques must be developed to allow macroscale spatial manipulation of sub-μL sample volumes in a highly parallel manner at sub-mm spacing. In this work, we present an approach formacroscopic manipulation of pL to μL fluid volumes [1] and demonstrate the application to slab gel electrophoresis.