Biochemical analysis on microfluidic chips
Introduction
In native cellular microenvironment, cells are subject to complex biochemical cues that vary in temporal and spatial scales [1]. These cues can be divided into soluble and insoluble signaling molecules, including chemokines [2], gradients of cytokines [3], growth factor secretion from neighboring cells [4], and even biophysical interactions with the extracellular matrix (ECM) [5]. The autocrine and paracrine signals are sensed by cells in different ways and regulate cell physiology temporally and spatially. Meanwhile, cells exert some factors to alter their surrounding microenvironment [6], [7]. Probing the biochemical processes could govern cell behavior and show great current and potential impact on the bio-analytical chemistry researches. However, most in vitro cell-based biochemical experiments are performed in two-dimensional (2D) manner that cells are cultured onto plastic surfaces and treated by coating them with various solutions [8], [9]. The standard 2D conditions poorly mimic the cellular microenvironment and are absent of three-dimensional (3D) cues.
Fortunately, microsystems bring unprecedented opportunities for giving analytical insights into cells and tissues [1], [10], [11], [12]. Microfluidic chips enable cells reside in a more physiologically relevant context and present cells with biochemical cues in a controllable and reproducible way [13], [14], [15]. 3D cell culture on microfluidic chips makes it possible to retain native tissue-specific functions of cells and recapitulate tissue-tissue interfaces, spatiotemporal chemical gradients [16], [17]. Various artificial organ systems have been particularly constructed on microfluidic platforms to reconstitute the critical organ functions [18], [19]. By integrating with biochemical analysis techniques, microdevices show great promise for basic biomedical and pharmaceutical researches. Over the past decade, the microfluidic chips have been recognized as ideal platforms for biochemical assays which have been widely expanded to tissue engineering, drug screening, biomolecular detection, single cell and stem cell analysis (Fig. 1).
In this Review, we describe methods and techniques of biochemical analysis on a micrometer scale and discuss the application of these microtechnologies in biological sample analysis. We further present a critical survey of recent advances and future trends of biochemical analysis in microsystems. Emphasis is placed on works aimed at gaining biological insights, as well as on efforts to realize advanced biochemical analysis on chips.
Section snippets
Biochemical analysis techniques on chips
Almost every conventional analytical tool in biochemistry labs has an equivalent microfabricated counterpart on chips. With tremendous advances, microfluidics could integrate technologies in various fields to perform rapid and reproducible analysis on small sample volumes as well as eliminate the labor-intensive and potentially error-prone laboratory manipulations. Here, we highlight several kinds of analytical methods applied in microfluidic chips in recent years.
Applications
By integrating various technologies from other fields, microfluidic device as a powerful analytical technique is increasingly being used in various biochemical researches, such as biomimetics, drug screening, biomolecular analysis and cell analysis. Some recent examples of these applications have been reviewed here.
Conclusions and outlook
Owning to the inherent advances in device design, fabrication and flexible integration with other microscale techniques, microfluidics has experienced an explosive growth during the past decades and become a major analytical technology with enlarging application fields. As a technique enabling precise manipulation of fluid at the micrometer scale, microfluidics has paved a revolutionary way for time-saving and cost-saving detection in sophisticated biochemical analysis. Not only traditional
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21405143, 21435002, 21227006) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2-9-2014-023).
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2023, TrAC - Trends in Analytical ChemistryCitation Excerpt :Diverse optical detection designed to couple with microfluidic device has been widely used in biochemical analysis due to its advantages of fast response speed, small interference, simple design, and ease of operation [40–42]. With the popularization of optical instruments in laboratories and the continuous development of micromachining technology, the combination of microfluidic technology and optical detection has become more commonplace [43,45,46]. Various optical detections of biochemical samples covering absorbance, fluorescence, infrared, SPR, chemiluminescence, and optical tweezers are summarized in Table 1.
Microfluidic bioanalysis based on nanozymes
2023, TrAC - Trends in Analytical ChemistryCitation Excerpt :Based on this microfluidic technology, lots of unprecedented bioanalyses have been advanced with low cost, high accuracy, high resolution, and simple operation [4,9,10]. And the microfluidic devices have been applied in many important areas, such as biomarker detection, high-throughput drug screening, single cell analysis, and genomic sequencing [4]. Though various novel analytical methods have been expanded in miniaturized devices, the specific biorecognition elements are largely limited to enzymes, antibodies, aptamers, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs), etc. [11].