Microfluidic SlipChip device for multistep multiplexed biochemistry on a nanoliter scale.

Dmitriy V Zhukov,David A Selck,Tahmineh Khazaei,Eugenia M Khorosheva,Alexander A Shishkin,Rustem F Ismagilov,Wenbin Du

doi:10.1039/c9lc00541b

Dmitriy V Zhukov, David A Selck + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1039/c9lc00541b

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Abstract

We have developed a multistep microfluidic device that expands the current SlipChip capabilities by enabling multiple steps of droplet merging and multiplexing. Harnessing the interfacial energy between carrier and sample phases, this manually operated device accurately meters nanoliter volumes of reagents and transfers them into on-device reaction wells. Judiciously shaped microfeatures and surface-energy traps merge droplets in a parallel fashion. Wells can be tuned for different volumetric capacities and reagent types, including for pre-spotted reagents that allow for unique identification of original well contents even after their contents are pooled. We demonstrate the functionality of the multistep SlipChip by performing RNA transcript barcoding on-device for synthetic spiked-in standards and for biologically derived samples. This technology is a good candidate for a wide range of biological applications that require multiplexing of multistep reactions in nanoliter volumes, including single-cell analyses.

Highlights

We have developed a multistep microfluidic device that expands the current SlipChip capabilities by enabling multiple steps of droplet merging and multiplexing
This paper explores a versatile microfluidic SlipChip device that performs multistep biochemical reactions in a multiplexed format on a nanoliter scale
The ability to perform multistep biochemical reactions will be of particular benefit for many protocols and biological assays,2 such as nucleic acid3 and biomarker detection/ quantification,4 time-sensitive and autocatalytic5 reactions, as well as particle synthesis

Summary

Introduction

We have developed a multistep microfluidic device that expands the current SlipChip capabilities by enabling multiple steps of droplet merging and multiplexing. We demonstrate the functionality of the multistep SlipChip by performing RNA transcript barcoding on-device for synthetic spiked-in standards and for biologically derived samples This technology is a good candidate for a wide range of biological applications that require multiplexing of multistep reactions in nanoliter volumes, including single-cell analyses. In addition to offering the general, well-established benefits of a miniaturized platform, (e.g., small reagent volumes, high relative concentrations of analytes), SlipChip devices give the user the capability to program a complex protocol of fluidic manipulations and to execute it by “slipping” the plates of the device among different conformations.

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