Droplet Interfaced Parallel and Quantitative Micro fl uidic - Based

8 ABSTRACT: High-throughput, quantitative, and rapid microfluidic9 based separations has been a long-sought goal for applications in 10 proteomics, genomics, biomarker discovery, and clinical diagnostics. 11 Using droplet-interfaced microchip electrophoresis (MCE) techni12 ques, we have developed a novel parallel MCE platform, based on 13 the concept of combining the Slipchip principle with a newly 14 developed “Gelchip”. The platform consists of two plastic plates, 15 with droplet wells on one plate and separation channels with 16 preloaded/cured gel in the other. A single relative movement of one 17 plate enables generation and then loading of multiple sample 18 droplets in parallel into the separation channels, allowing electro19 phoretic separation of biomolecules in the droplets in parallel and 20 with high-throughput. As proof of concept, we demonstrated the 21 separation of 30 sub-nL sample droplets containing fluorescent dyes or DNA fragments.