Research and Application of Microfluidics in Protein Crystallization

With the significant development of the MEMS (micro electromechanical system) technology during these years, microfluidics is currently one of the most rapidly growing frontier fields, which provides a new and powerful platform for chemical and biological assays. The advantages of the microfuidic chip that include high-through, low-consumption and low-cost make it an attractive technique for both initial screening and subsequent optimization of protein crystallization conditions. This review presents the mechanisms and principles of microfluidic technologies applied to the crystallization of biological macromolecules. A comparison of the devices that are available commercially or described in the literature summarizes the current state-of-the-art in microfluidics-based protein crystallization.