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The Visual Colorimetric Detection of Multi-nucleotide Polymorphisms on a Pneumatic Droplet Manipulation Platform
Published on: September 27, 2016
Moisture capture by dimethyl sulfoxide-containing levitated droplets in air and fast click reactions in DMSO-water
Kako Ri1, Masato Tsutsui1, Teruhiko Matsubara1
1Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan.
Abstract:
Droplet levitation in air represents a promising containerless, plastic-free reaction vessel for chemical biology. In this study, we show that dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a hygroscopic solvent that absorbs moisture from air, is a suitable additive for long-term levitation and for copper-catalyzed alkyne-azide cycloaddition reactions in levitated droplets. When the volume of solvent mixtures composed of water and water-miscible organic solvents was precisely monitored, the evaporation of DMSO-containing aqueous mixtures was negligible, and their volume increased under high humidity. Furthermore, the click reaction in a DMSO-water mixture under levitation proceeded faster and with higher yield than the same reaction performed in a shaken tube. Together, these results suggest that ultrasonic levitation has the potential not only to alter conventional experimental workflows in chemical biology, but also to enable capture of moisture from ambient air.
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