Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Hideaki Maeda.
A novel and facile method for the preparation of an enzyme-immobilized microreactor has been developed in which enzymes are immobilized as an enzyme-polymer membrane formed on the inner wall of the microchannel by a cross-linking polymerization method; the resulting microreactor shows excellent reaction performance and stability against denaturating agents.
Microfluidic systems enable superior control of fluidics. We have developed a novel size-separation method utilizing secondary flow within a microchannel. Using confocal fluorescence microscopy and computer simulation, we confirmed that separation occurred as a result of specific molecular localization in the curving part of the microchannel. Maximum separation efficiency was achieved by optimizing microchannel design and flow rate for individual separation targets. In addition, more effective separation was achieved by use of plural microchannel curves. This method was used for sequence-selective DNA sensing. Double-stranded DNA formed by hybridization between target DNA and a complementary probe had different elution profiles from those of the single-stranded non-complementary sequence. Moreover, the response depends on the length of the DNA molecules. This method does not require immobilization of either probe or target DNA, because all reactions occurred in the solution phase. Such features may reduce experimental error and the difference between data from different operators.
We have developed a microfluidic system for polymerization of amino acid N-carboxyanhydride and compared the properties of the products with those obtained by batchwise system under various experimental conditions. It was found that the microreactor produced polymers with narrower molecular weight distribution compared with polymers obtained by the batchwise system. Also, the molecular mass of the polymer produced using the microreactor was simply governed by the flow (pumping) rate. These results indicated that the microreactor could be a model for synthesis of amino acid polymer with highly controllable average molecular weight and molecular weight distribution.
A previous report by Kelly et al. [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 124 (2002) 12013] indicated that the ionic conductivity of aqueous solution produces a significant contribution to the sensitivity loss in high-resolution NMR equipped with a cryogenically cooled probe. The loss in a sample solution contains two contributions: one from the ionic conductivity and the other from the dielectric loss; the latter is especially important at high frequencies such as above 900 MHz. Here, we investigated the effect of the dielectric conductivity on the quality factor of a 930 MHz cryogenic probe model; in particular, it deals with the ionic aqueous solutions and organic solvents commonly used for NMR in biological research and the chemistry of natural compounds. The sample quality factor, Qs, at first increases with the real part of the relative dielectric permittivity epsilon' and then saturates. In the case of polar organic solvents, the transverse electric field on the sample decreases with epsilon', resulting in an increase of Qs. In the case of non-polar organic solvents, the dielectric conductivity is so small that the gradient of the increase is steep, resulting in much larger Qs though the epsilon' is small. The effect of the transverse electric field is negligible if the epsilon' becomes large, thus the loss for ionic aqueous solution is mainly governed by a loop current induced in the sample solution. As the induced electromotive force is independent of the epsilon', the Qs is saturated at high values of epsilon'. Based on the Qs obtained with the cryogenic probe model, the sensitivity for the cryogenic probe is expected to be as follows: the loss in sensitivity by loading water is more than 66%, i.e., the effect of the dielectric conductivity of water is remarkable at high frequencies; polar organic solvent suffers much larger losses, which is due to the enhancement of the effective sample resistance by the effect of epsilon'; a non-polar organic solvent is nearly free of the sensitivity loss as the dielectric conductivity is negligible; the reverse micelle behaves similarly.
We developed a simple immobilisation method for His-tagged enzymes on a microchannel surface. It facilitates immobilisation of protein molecule on microchannel surface through Ni-complex, using crude or purified protein solutions. By this method, we could immobilize proteins on microcapillary constantly. This method might be useful for further development of microreactor with reversibly immobilized enzymes.
Conformational control of macromolecules is useful for efficient chemical and biochemical reactions. This article reports a direct observation method for macromolecules, such as long-strand DNA, in microchannel flow as well as a simple method for stretching DNA strands by microfluidics. Stretching and orientation of DNA molecules by control of flow within a microchannel was observed by optical microscopy. This DNA stretching is explained by coil-stretch transition of polymer molecules. This technique is useful for creating chemical reactions with macromolecules. It offers high selectivity and efficiency that are impossible to achieve in bulk solution. We also demonstrate that our microfluidic stretching method can accomplish efficient hybridization of long-strand DNA. This method will be useful for direct hybridization assay of long-strand DNA.
We used a microreactor for CdSe nanocrystal preparation and explored the effects of experimental conditions on the properties of the products. The particle growth kinetics and photoluminescence properties of the nanocrystals showed identical trends to previous reports, indicating the efficiency of the current method for analysis of rapid nanocrystal synthesis as well as industrial production of CdSe nanocrystals.
This is to introduce a new method for determining the amount of blood loss by measuring the storage iron decrease rate (SID), as obtained by following serum ferritin after intravenous iron therapy in a patient with iron deficiency anemia due to intestinal blood loss. The patient was followed from the day S, when iron therapy started, to the day E, when serum ferritin decreased to 12 microg/l, indicating the exhaustion of the iron stores. The SID was calculated from the formula: SID=(T-R)/D, where, T mg = total amount of injected iron, R mg = the difference in the iron in the hemoglobin (deltaHb) between day S and E, and D = days from S to E. The SID was thought to be iron loss only, as the contribution of iron absorption and iron loss to the SID, with the exception of bleeding, was believed to be negligible and as the serum ferritin decrease curve was exponentially linear. Using the formula, V = iron loss/iron in mean Hb, the amount of blood loss: V=29 ml/day was obtained. This method can also be used for the quantitation of blood loss in other patients with chronic blood loss, because the SID could also be determined in 12 cases of post-treatment iron deficiency anemia with chronic blood loss.
ZnS-coated CdSe composite particles have been continuously synthesized in a microfluidic reactor. By using this system, CdSe particles and a ZnS coating can be produced in sequence, and the particle size and layer thickness can be directly adjusted by the residence time. It demonstrated that the continuous synthesis in the microreactor was a simple and efficient way to prepare composite particles with different structures and determine the optimized experimental conditions.
On-site detection methods for DNA have been demanded in the pathophysiology field. Such analysis requires a simple and accurate method, rather than high-throughput. This report describes a novel microfluidic analysis method and its application for simple sequence-selective DNA detection. The method uses a microchannel device with a serpentine structure. Sequence-specific binding of probe DNA can be detected at one side of the microchannel. This method is capable of sequence-specific detection of DNA with high accuracy. Single base mutations can also be analyzed. Combination of laminar stream and laminar secondary flow in the microchannel enable specific detection of probe-bound DNA.
By using silica layers bound to the surface of the inner wall of the microchannel via a self-assembly technique which relies on capillary forces to organize the colloids, TiO2 particles were attached to the inner surface of a microcapillary. The reduction rate of methylene blue increased by more than 150 times in the SiO2/TiO2 modified micro-space compared to that in a batch system.
We developed a novel preparation method of nanostructure on the microchannel surface formed by sol-gel like simple treatment with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane, which is suitable for a highly efficient enzyme-immobilized microchannel reactor.
Formylpeptide receptors are well-characterized receptors which participate in host defense responses of neutrophils. We designed and synthesized chemotactic peptide analog with p-benzoylphenylalanine (Bpa) and biotin to probe structural and mechanistic aspects of peptide-receptor interaction. These peptides possess biological activities which were dependent upon spacer residue length of and Bpa position. The covalent photoaffinity label was detected by Streptavidine-blot, which was inhibited by the parent peptide.
A micro-reactor was utilized for continuous and controlled CdSe nanocrystal preparation. Effects of reaction conditions on optical properties of the nanocrystals were investigated; in this current system, rapid and exact temperature control of the micro-reactor was beneficial for controlling particle diameter and reproducible preparation of particles; additional effort was made towards narrower particle-size distributions.
A stable interface between two insoluble currents in a microchannel reactor has been obtained by selecting the solvents and adjusting the flow rate; titania particles with a size of less than 10 nm could be prepared continuously on this interface; this new method shows great advantage for the control and measurement of particle sizes.
An easy-to-use and low cost microreactor made of polymethylmethacrylate was mechanically fabricated with a microchannel (200 microm x 200 microm). The laminar flow behavior was investigated by visualizing the flow of red and green aqueous solutions. Digitized color images from a CCD camera were analyzed by resolving the color in RGB mode. Numeric data from red and green color components in the images could reveal the fluidic behavior in the microchannel because the spatial spectroscopic information corresponds to the color solution flows. Effects of corner shapes in a turn, flow rate and surface roughness were observed on the mixing of the laminar flows. A right angle turn and unevenness of +/-10% of the inner wall surface almost mixed the two color laminar flows.
Glycosidase-promoted hydrolysis was performed in a microreaction channel. The result was compared with the reaction in a micro-test tube. Transgalactosylation on p-nitrophenyl-2-acetamide-2-deoxy-beta-D-glucopyranoside was also examined in a microreaction channel, because transglycosylation is a useful method for oligosaccharide synthesis. We examined both the forward reaction, i.e., hydrolysis, and the reverse reaction, i.e., transglycosylation, in the microreaction channel. The results showed that both hydrolysis and transglycosylation were enhanced in the microreaction channel compared with the batch reaction.