title: A microdroplet dilutor for high-throughput screening.
abstract: Pipetting and dilution are universal processes used in chemical and biological laboratories to assay and experiment. In microfluidics such operations are equally in demand, but difficult to implement. Recently, droplet-based microfluidics has emerged as an exciting new platform for high-throughput experimentation. However, it is challenging to vary the concentration of droplets rapidly and controllably. To this end, we developed a dilution module for high-throughput screening using droplet-based microfluidics. Briefly, a nanolitre-sized sample droplet of defined concentration is trapped within a microfluidic chamber. Through a process of droplet merging, mixing and re-splitting, this droplet is combined with a series of smaller buffer droplets to generate a sequence of output droplets that define a digital concentration gradient. Importantly, the formed droplets can be merged with other reagent droplets to enable rapid chemical and biological screens. As a proof of concept, we used the dilutor to perform a high-throughput homogeneous DNA-binding assay using only nanolitres of sample.
authors: Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London SW72AZ, UK.
authors: Xize
authors: X
authors: Niu
authors: Fabrice
authors: F
authors: Gielen
authors: Joshua B
authors: JB
authors: Edel
authors: Andrew J
authors: AJ
authors: deMello
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