Microfluidic Control of Coexisting Chemical Microenvironments within Multiphase Water-in-Fluorocarbon Droplets
Microfluidic Control of Coexisting Chemical Microenvironments within Multiphase Water-in-Fluorocarbon Droplets
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DOI：
10.1021/acs.langmuir.1c02929
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发表时间：
2022-01-28
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Keating, Christine D.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Crowe, Charles D.;Keating, Christine D.
在油包水乳滴中使用基于聚合物的水相分离为探索分隔和优先分配对生物相关溶质的影响提供了一个强大的平台。通过形成乳状液，大量的溶液被转化为大量化学隔离的微滴。微流控技术为此类系统的形成提供了额外的控制水平。这使得能够有选择地产生具有所需的溶液组成和特定特性的多相液滴，例如溶质分配。在这里，我们展示了对化学微环境的控制，方法是调整组成，以增加多相氟碳水包油乳滴中包裹的聚乙二醇(PEG)-葡聚糖双水相体系(ATPS)的连接线长度。仅通过合理调整微流控参数，就可以在一次实验过程中产生不同组成的ATPS液滴，所产生的液滴具有可控的联络线长度范围。这提供了对生物相关大分子的分配行为的控制，从而可以合理地调节相邻相之间的局部蛋白质浓度的差异。这项工作展示了一种广泛适用的技术，仅通过调整微流控参数就可以合理地创建所需组成的乳化多相水体系，从而允许轻松快速地筛选各种化学微环境。
The use of aqueous polymer-based phase separation within water-inoil emulsion droplets provides a powerful platform for exploring the impact of compartmentalization and preferential partitioning on biologically relevant solutes. By forming an emulsion, a bulk solution is converted into a large number of chemically isolated microscale droplets. Microfluidic techniques provide an additional level of control over the formation of such systems. This enables the selective production of multiphase droplets with desired solution compositions and specific characteristics, such as solute partitioning. Here, we demonstrate control over the chemical microenvironment by adjusting the composition to increase tie line length for poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-dextran aqueous twophase systems (ATPS) encapsulated within multiphase water-in-fluorocarbon oil emulsion droplets. Through rational adjustment of microfluidic parameters alone, ATPS droplets containing differing compositions could be produced during the course of a single experiment, with the produced droplets demonstrating a controllable range of tie line lengths. This provided control over partitioning behavior for biologically relevant macromolecules such that the difference in local protein concentration between adjacent phases could be rationally tuned. This work illustrates a broadly applicable technique to rationally create emulsified multiphase aqueous systems of desired compositions through the adjustment of microfluidic parameters alone, allowing for easy and rapid screening of various chemical microenvironments.