Use of laminar flow patterning for miniaturised biochemical assays

Laminar flow in microfluidic chambers was used to construct low (one dimensional) density arrays suitable for miniaturized biochemical assays. By varying the ratio of flows of two guiding streams flanking a sample stream, precise focusing and positioning of the latter was achieved, and reactive species carried in the sample stream were deposited on functionalized chip surfaces as discrete 50 microm wide lanes. Using different model systems we have confirmed the method's suitability for qualitative screening and quantification tasks in receptor-ligand assays, recording biotin-streptavidin interactions, DNA-hybridization and DNA-triplex formation. The system is simple, fast, reproducible, flexible, and has small sample requirements.