A Droplet-Based, Composite PDMS/Glass Capillary Microfluidic System for Evaluating Protein Crystallization Conditions by Microbatch and Vapor-Diffusion Methods with On-Chip X-Ray Diffraction†
This work was supported by the NIH (R01 EB001903), and by Beckman Young Investigator Program, and was performed at the MRSEC microfluidic facility funded by NSF. L.S.R. is supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Cross-Disciplinary Training Program in Biophysical Dynamics. We thank Adam Lyon for preliminary experiments. We thank Phoebe Rice, Keith Moffatt, Andrzej Joachimiak, Chuan He, and Erica Duguid for valuable discussions and help with protein crystallography. Use of the Advanced Photon Source was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Office of Science, under Contract No. W-31-109-Eng-38. Use of the BioCARS Sector 14 was supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Research Resources, under grant number RR07707.
Graphical Abstract
On-chip protein crystallization and diffraction: Proteins can be crystallized in nanoliter volumes by using both microbatch and vapor-diffusion techniques inside composite PDMS/glass microfluidic devices (PDMS=polydimethylsiloxane). The quality of crystals can be assessed directly by on-chip X-ray diffraction (see picture).
