Microfluidic Platform for Electrical Monitoring of Enzyme Activity

In this letter, we present a scalable method based on the use of microfluidics and electrical conductivity measurement for monitoring the activity of an enzyme. This scalable method can be used for drug screening to test for the ability of an organic small molecule to inhibit the activity of an enzyme. Our method involves the use of electrodes integrated in a microchannel for the measurement of conductivity across the channel. An ac measurement is used to monitor the conductivity across the channel as the enzyme reaction proceeds. Here, we show the ability to measure these changes in conductivity and also the ability to distinguish between an active and inactive enzyme using an enzyme with two orders of magnitude reduced.