Handling of artificial membranes using electrowetting-actuated droplets on a microfluidic device combined with...

Artificial membranes, as a controllable environment, are an essential tool to study membrane proteins. Electrophysiology provides information about the ion transport mechanism across a membrane at the single-protein level. Unfortunately, high-throughput studies and screening are not accessible to electrophysiology because it is a set of not automated and technically delicate methods. Therefore, it is necessary to automate and parallelize electrophysiology measurement in artificial membranes. Here, we present a first step toward this goal: the fabrication and characterization of a microfluidic device integrating electrophysiology measurements and the handling of an artificial membrane which includes its formation, its displacement and the separation of its leaflets using electrowetting actuation of sub-μL droplets. To validate this device, we recorded the insertion of a model porin, α-hemolysin.