Quantitative nanopipettor for miniaturized chemical and biochemical reaction sampling

A novel and readily available pipettor capable of nanoliter-sized volume manipulation was developed to improve and increase the flexibility of small-scale reaction processing. The volume delivery was found to be reproducible, with typical relative standard deviations of 1-5%, and easily tunable over a range of nanoliter-sized aliquots. The nanopipettor was combined with capillary electrophoresis using laser-induced fluorescence detection to monitor a small-scale enzyme reaction (beta-galactosidase) using a tetramethylrhodamine-labeled substrate. The results were in good agreement with a standard enzyme assay using a micropipet, thus demonstrating the nanopipettor's potential in developing new nanoscale utrasensitive enzyme assays.