title: Development and application of a miniaturized gel electrophoresis device for protein analysis.
abstract: The present article describes a miniaturized polyacrylamide slab gel electrophoresis-chip (PASGE-Chip) that can rapidly separate a set of predefined samples as well as cell lysate samples for clinical diagnosis. The chip consists of a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) upper unit (25 x 30 x 10 mm, width x length x depth) with integrated buffer chambers, running electrodes and loading wells and a bottom unit comprising a silicon dioxide-coated silicon plate with embossed gel chamber (11 x 15 x 0.37 mm). This miniaturized device was designed to be fast, easy to use and cheap to produce. The polyacrylamide slab gel electrophoresis can be performed in less than 10 min with low voltage. The gel-to-gel repeatability is around 3.8%. The limit of detection is approx. 10 ng as determined by Coomassie staining of selected standard proteins, and corresponds to a 10-fold increase in sensitivity as compared with a common size PAGE analysis device (e.g. 10 x 7 cm). The device was successfully applied to peptide mass fingerprint analysis, protein sequencing and ultra-sensitive immunodetection, and the performance was compared to a commonly used regular PAGE device.
authors.affiliation: Protein Chemistry Unit, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Helsinki, Haartmaninkatu 8, 00014 Helsinki, Finland. Zuzana.Demianova@helsinki.fi
authors.forename: Zuzana
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Demianova
authors.forename: Eemeli
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pöysä
authors.forename: Saara
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ihalainen
authors.forename: Susanna
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Saura
authors.forename: Masahiko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shimmo
authors.forename: Sami
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Franssila
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baumann
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D004591:Electrophoresis, Polyacrylamide Gel / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D010455:Peptides / Q000737:chemistry; D011506:Proteins / Q000032:analysis*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D019032:Spectrometry, Mass, Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides; D011506:Proteins