Dolomite microfluidic chips are helping researchers from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) to develop novel enzymes capable of polymerising synthetic nucleotides. Using these chips, the team has created a droplet-based optical polymerase sorting (DrOPS) technique allowing rapid screening for novel polymerase activities in uniform water-in-oil microcompartments. The team’s leader, Professor John C. Chaput – formerly at ASU and currently at the University of California, Irvine – explained: “The creation of synthetic nucleic acids is of great interest to synthetic biologists but, because they are not found in nature, wild type polymerases struggle to process them. To overcome this issue, we are developing novel polymerases using directed evolution in water-in-oil microcompartments. The DrOPS methodology has significant advantages over traditional methods, which are both labour intensive and impractical to perform on a large scale due to the amount of precious artificial nucleotide reagents required for screening.”
The Biodesign Institute turned to microfluidics to allow rapid sorting and screening of novel polymerases, taking advantage of the technique’s single-cell encapsulation capabilities and picolitre reaction volumes. Dr Andrew Larsen commented: “We needed very reproducible microfluidics, and so using commercially available chips was preferable. We already had experience with Dolomite’s chips for a variety of applications within the institute, and they have always been very consistent, so the choice was obvious. These chips give us the ability to consistently generate uniform droplets – both single and double emulsion droplets – offering spatial separation between cells and allowing fluorescence-based sorting using conventional FACS technologies. Dolomite has also been very supportive of our efforts, helping to accelerate this area of research.”
For more information, visit www.dolomite-bio.com.
About Dolomite Bio
Dolomite Bio creates innovative products for high throughput single cell research. By encapsulating single cells in microfluidic droplets, our products enable rapid analysis of thousands or millions of individual cells and their biological products.
Dolomite Bio is a brand of Blacktrace Holdings Ltd (www.blacktrace.com), a world leader in Productizing Science®. Our Head Office is based in Royston (near Cambridge), UK and we have regional offices in the USA, Japan, India and Brazil.
Dolomite Bio’s products include µEncapsulator System and RNA Seq system, suitable for use in many applications such as isolating antibody coding sequencing, profiling T cell receptors, droplets for FACS-sorting libraries and encapsulating cells in gel microbeads. To find out more about Dolomite Bio, please visit www.dolomite-bio.com.
The Biodesign Institute turned to microfluidics to allow rapid sorting and screening of novel polymerases, taking advantage of the technique’s single-cell encapsulation capabilities and picolitre reaction volumes. Dr Andrew Larsen commented: “We needed very reproducible microfluidics, and so using commercially available chips was preferable. We already had experience with Dolomite’s chips for a variety of applications within the institute, and they have always been very consistent, so the choice was obvious. These chips give us the ability to consistently generate uniform droplets – both single and double emulsion droplets – offering spatial separation between cells and allowing fluorescence-based sorting using conventional FACS technologies. Dolomite has also been very supportive of our efforts, helping to accelerate this area of research.”
For more information, visit www.dolomite-bio.com.
About Dolomite Bio
Dolomite Bio creates innovative products for high throughput single cell research. By encapsulating single cells in microfluidic droplets, our products enable rapid analysis of thousands or millions of individual cells and their biological products.
Dolomite Bio is a brand of Blacktrace Holdings Ltd (www.blacktrace.com), a world leader in Productizing Science®. Our Head Office is based in Royston (near Cambridge), UK and we have regional offices in the USA, Japan, India and Brazil.
Dolomite Bio’s products include µEncapsulator System and RNA Seq system, suitable for use in many applications such as isolating antibody coding sequencing, profiling T cell receptors, droplets for FACS-sorting libraries and encapsulating cells in gel microbeads. To find out more about Dolomite Bio, please visit www.dolomite-bio.com.
