Microfluidic devices for advanced in-situ measurement

Microfluidic devices enable us to achieve high-throughput and high-resolution biochemical measurement with reduced amount of samples and reagents. Adopting the so-called 'softlithography', the author has been developing such devices with a PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane)-glass hybrid structure for applications such as gene amplification, DNA separation, cell-free protein synthesis, etc. By integrating these components into a monolithic microchip, an advanced in-situ analysis system can be realized to understand biological functions of deep-sea microorganisms, which should be one of the next major scopes of biological oceanography.