Microfluidic enzymatic reactors for proteome research

Most of the immobilized microfluidic enzymatic reactor applications are used for the identification of protein by peptide mapping. Microfluidic enzymatic reactors are fabricated by immobilizing enzymes within the inner surface of a microfluidic channel and on magnetic beads that can be magnetically immobilized in the microchannels. Peptide mapping is typically performed using enzymatic cleavage of the protein, and the resulting degraded products are subsequently identified using electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI MS). One of the advantages of immobilized microfluidic reactors lies in their flexibility, which implies that the approach can be applied in large-scale analysis integrated with separation procedures to implement on-line protein identification. Microfluidic enzymatic reactors are expected to become increasingly important to future development and progress of the proteomics field.