Microarray and Droplet Screening Platforms
We are developing screening technologies using droplet microfluidics, vesicles, and droplet arrays to compartmentalize and study thousands of small volume reactors.
Double emulsion (DE) droplets are water-in-oil-in-water compartments that can compartmentalize a wide range of chemical compounds or even single bacterial cells. Droplet microfluidics enables the formation of highly monodisperse DE droplets at several kHz. Unlike single emulsions, the outer phase of DE droplets consists of water, enabling their high-throughput analysis with commercially-available tools such a flow cytometers and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) devices. We demonstrated the potential of such systems for bacterial induction (Stucki & Jusková 2021) and enzymatic activity screenings (Vallapurackal & Stucki 2021).
Selected References
A. Stucki, P. Jusková, N. Nuti, S. Schmitt, P. S. Dittrich:
Synchronized Reagent Delivery in Double Emulsions for Triggering Chemical Reactions and Gene Expression,
Small Methods, 5 (2021), 2100331, external page link.
J. Vallapurackal, A. Stucki, A. D. Liang, J. Klehr, P. S. Dittrich, T. R. Ward:
Single-Round Remodeling of the Active Site of an Artificial Metalloenzyme using an Ultrahigh-Throughput Double Emulsion Screening Assay,
bioRxiv 2021.09.20.460989; external page link.