earticle

영어

A microchip that integrates the sol-gel affinity column of a SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment) system is developed. SELEX has been widely used for identification and characterization of interactions between aptamers and protein, peptides or chemical compounds. Aptamers, nucleic acid species that have been selected through repeated rounds of SELEX offer utility for biotechnological and therapeutic applications as they offer molecular recognition properties that rival that of the commonly used antibodies. To obtain a high-quality aptamer requires typically 8-12 rounds of SELEX, where each round includes both positive and negative selection. This can require a few to several weeks of effort. Therefore, multiplexing and more efficient SELEX technologies could significantly reduce the cost of generating these reagents. Our microchip includes electric heaters for individual heat elution from sol-gels which contain target molecules. To test the microfluidic system for SELEX compatibility, agrochemicals, azoxistrobin, was delivered, then binding aptamers were eluted from sol-gels and amplified by PCR. We also demonstrated the multiplex SELEX in this microfluidic system by adding pneumatic air valves between incubation chambers.We could specifically bind and elute the corresponding aptamers from each target embedded sol-gels. Comparing to the conventional SELEX, our microfluidic SELEX system improved cycle efficiency.