Kappa(κ)Chip: a modular microfluidic device for analyte screening using parallelized assays and a multiple shear rate...

Area of Science:

• Biomaterials Science
• Microfluidics
• Synthetic Biology

Background:

• Polymers often exhibit low surface energies, hindering adhesive interactions.
• Biology offers vast potential for discovering novel adhesive materials through bioinspiration.
• High-throughput, low-volume screening methods are crucial for discovering new bioinspired adhesives.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel microfluidic chip, the kappa(κ)Chip, for efficient high-throughput screening of bioinspired adhesives.
• To enable rapid evaluation and comparison of multiple adhesive candidates against various substrates.
• To facilitate the discovery of strong biological adhesives using a microfluidic platform.

Main Methods:

• Development of the kappa(κ)Chip, a parallelized microfluidic device enabling 24 simultaneous adhesion tests.
• Utilizing microfabrication, microfluidics, material sciences, synthetic biology, multiphysics simulation, and machine learning (ML).
• Evaluating fungal hydrophobin proteins displayed on cell surfaces as a proxy for adhesive properties.

Main Results:

• The kappa(κ)Chip significantly enhances testing efficiency, reducing experimental time and reagent consumption.
• The platform allows for rapid rank-ordering of potential binding motifs against arbitrary substrates.
• Successful evaluation of engineered fungal hydrophobins as potential biological adhesives.

Conclusions:

• The kappa(κ)Chip is a powerful tool for accelerating the discovery of novel bioinspired adhesives.
• This microfluidic platform integrates multiple scientific disciplines for advanced materials discovery.
• The technology has potential applications in cell adhesion studies and marine fouling research.