Homogeneous, heterogeneous, and enzyme catalysis in microfluidics droplets

Abstract

Microfluidics has received extensive attention due to its ability to rapidly prepare a large number of microdroplets with controlled sizes and defined morphologies. In addition to having large surface areas and controllable confinement environments, these prepared microdroplets can be used as analytical detection devices to screen and optimize various kinetic parameters. This review summarizes recent advances in the microfluidic control of droplet‐based catalytic reactions and discusses the role of these droplets in both homogeneous and heterogeneous catalyzes and in the catalysis of macromolecular biological enzymes in water‐in‐oil and oil‐in‐oil environments. Additionally, the existing problems and future development directions of droplets in catalysis are highlighted to promote the development of catalytic reactions in droplet media and provide guidance for the high‐throughput screening of catalysts and the directed evolution of biological enzymes.

Cage-based sensors for circular dichroism analysis

“…Moreover, metallacage ligands can consist of a single molecule or a combination of multiple molecules with different functionalities. [38][39][40] Sensors must often possess specific chiral recognition sites to differentiate chiral molecules, and hostguest complexes of chiral metal cages with analytes are a common approach. Unlike traditional chiral sensors, metallacages possess distinct cavities as recognition sites, and the edges of the cage can also bind analytes, which greatly broadens the design strategies for chiral sensors.…”

Recent advances in combatting bacterial infections via well-designed metallacycles/metallacages

“…Despite numerous reviews on the applications of SCCs in biomedicine, 40–43 so far, no review has specifically focused on their applications in the field of antibacterials. Thus, this review aims to address this gap by providing a detailed summary of the current use of SCCs in antibacterial applications and by presenting their design strategies.…”

FACS-Sortable Triple Emulsion Picoreactors for Screening Reactions in Biphasic Environments

“…Droplet microfluidics provides a potential way to scale these screens via high-throughput compartmentalization and sorting to recover and identify catalysts or conditions favorable for product formation. To date, single-phase droplet microfluidics has been used to screen for and isolate promising candidates from libraries of variants for organic 27 , metallic 28 , organometallic 29 , and enzymatic catalysts [30][31][32][33] via FADS (Fluorescence Activated Droplet Screening) and MADS (Mass spectrometry Activated Droplet Screening), both of which require custom device fabrication and equipment. More recently, double emulsion droplets have enabled ultra-high-throughput encapsulation, screening, and isolation of pL-volume reactions using only simple microfluidic devices and commercially-available equipment [34][35][36][37] .…”