微流控技术应用于蛋白质结晶的研究*

随着微电子微机械等技术的不断进步，微流控(microfluidics)技术成为目前迅速发展的前沿领域之一，是化学科学和生命科学分析研究的重要技术平台。微流控技术高通量、低消耗和低成本的特点使其在蛋白质结晶条件筛选和优化方面展示了良好的应用前景。本文对应用于蛋白质结晶的各种微流控芯片技术的原理和方法进行了综述，并对目前几种商业化和文献报道的典型蛋白质结晶微流控系统进行了介绍和比较。

Research and Application of Microfluidics in Protein Crystallization

With the significant development of the MEMS (micro electromechanical system) technology during these years, microfluidics is currently one of the most rapidly growing frontier fields, which provides a new and powerful platform for chemical and biological assays. The advantages of the microfuidic chip that include high-through, low-consumption and low-cost make it an attractive technique for both initial screening and subsequent optimization of protein crystallization conditions. This review presents the mechanisms and principles of microfluidic technologies applied to the crystallization of biological macromolecules. A comparison of the devices that are available commercially or described in the literature summarizes the current state-of-the-art in microfluidics-based protein crystallization. Contents
1 Introduction
2 The advantage of microfluidics for protein crystallization application
3 Typical microfluidics in protein crystallization
3.1 Free interface diffusion-based microfluidic crystallization
3.2 Microbatch-based microfluidic crystallization
3.3 Vapor diffusion-hased microfluidic crystallization
3.4 Microdialysis-based microfluidic crystallization
4 Conclusion