Microfluidics group at Taltech published a universal guide in the journal Analytical Chemistry for studying living things inside tiny drops of water. Water droplets are applied in modern science like very tiny test-tubes that have sizes smaller than the width of a human hair.The guide provides advice for how to label the water drops so that you can understand what is happening inside. This helps scientists to explore even the tiniest living things or biomolecules with detail. Through this publication, the Microfluidics group will make “drop-based” tools more accessible for everyone in science.
Drop-based tools are a new and exciting technology used in biology and chemistry. Usually, scientists use test tubes or flasks for studying biosamples, but with drop-based tools they can instead create thousands to millions of tiny drops of liquid in seconds. Inside each drop, they can put everything they wish to study so that each drop acts as miniature test tube. Scientists can then move, mix, and analyse the drops as they wish. This means scientists can perform lots of experiments faster and with more detail than ever before, while using only small amounts of material.
The problem is that the drop-based tools are still not used much in science, because there is not enough basic information widely known among scientists how to use them. The experiments can involve difficult steps and require knowledge from different scientific fields. The microfluidics team has published this guide to help overcome this problem. Advice in the guide is based upon recent studies that use advanced approaches for studying living things or biomolecules in drops. The studies are grouped by their research topic in the field of biology and include genes, small molecules, and cells. With the guide, scientists receive step-by-step help to choose the right markers (like glowing tags) for finding and studying living things in the tiny drops in their specific area of interest. In biology, marking things properly is necessary because often biologists study things visually by use of microscopes and other detection technologies.
The guide will make it easier for all scientists to use drop-based tools that will lead them to uncover more of life’s mysteries and develop new medicines and materials.
Contact person: Simona Bartkova
Email: simona.bartkova@taltech.ee
DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c04282