Microchip electrophoresis has dramatically expanded the area of bioseparations due to potential benefits it offers, such as the integration of the separation processing step with sample preparation. However, the separation mechanisms for microchip electrophoresis and capillary electrophoresis are, in principle, the same.
Development of devices to perform chemical determination of organic compounds in complex matrices involves two main directions. One is to design sensors, which are simple portable on-site but typically limited to single component determination with selectivity determined by membrane and/or readout characteristics. The other approach is to use hyphenated separation with mass spectrometry technologies such as GC/MS and LC/MS which allow multicomponent determination typically limited by sample preparation to deliver good analytical performance.
Oligonucleotides are a novel class of drugs with the potential to treat a wide spectrum of indications, including cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic conditions, neurological disorders, pulmonary and ophthalmic diseases. Several different modalities using oligonucleotides to treat disease have been successfully employed, e.g., antisense, siRNA, aptamer, CRISPR, and mRNA, with an increasing number of drug approvals in recent years.
Dielectrophoresis (DEP) refers to the migration of polarizable particles, colloids, biomolecules, organelles, viruses, and other analytes in the presence of an electric field gradient. The large variety of analytes prone to DEP migration implies the potential to become a critical element in separation sciences adding to the toolkit for researchers seeking high performance techniques.
Small molecules in the human body include the endogenous metabolites, exogenous exposure, and microbial metabolic products. The changes in these three types of compounds directly reflect human physical and mental health. By using mass spectrometry (MS) to analyze the content of exposome and the change of metabolome, the relationship between these substances and the occurrence and development of diseases can be revealed. Unfortunately, there are at least 500,000 endogenous and exogenous compounds involved in the metabolome and exposome, with varying chemical properties and significant concentration differences. Therefore, the first key to research is to achieve high coverage detection of endogenous and exogenous chemicals. Meanwhile, the identification of compounds is another crucial issue to be addressed. Moreover, to reveal the relevant mechanisms and their abundance and changes in the population, the research subjects have posed challenges to the sensitivity and repeatability of analytical instruments and methods, ranging from single cells to large-scale populations, from time to space, and from hosts to microbiota.
The past decades have witnessed an enormous progress in separation efficiency and peak capacity that can be achieved in 1D liquid chromatography (LC) columns in a practically affordable time. However, there are still areas where the need for more efficiency and speed is imminent. One such area is that of proteomics. Given the typical small size of proteomics samples and the need for sensitivity, micro- and nano-flow LC is the current LC method of choice in proteomics research.
