Two-dimensional microfluidic devices and methods of using the same

摘要: Two-dimensional (2D) separations are an important tool for the identification and characterization of proteins. 2D separations enable the identification of species with a higher specificity and better separation resolution compared to one-dimensional (1D) techniques. Probing proteins by two characteristics enables the identification of species with more precision. For example, protein size separations are used for the identification of specific proteins; combined with charge separations, specific isoforms can also be iden tified. Current macroscale approaches are labor intensive and slow. Additionally they lack reproducibility due to the variability introduced by user intervention. In addition, current approaches have been unable to seamlessly integrate the different separation modes without losing information from the first separation upon transferring to the second separation.