Temperature-controlled positioning of fusion proteins in microreactors

Abstract

We present a non-covalent immobilization system based on stimulus-responsive elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) to facilitate the positioning of proteins in microchannels. Two ELP variants were constructed and connected to fluorescent proteins EGFP and DsRed2. These fusion proteins display an inverse transition behavior that can be simply controlled by varying concentrations of NaCl. With these ELP fusion proteins two patches of fluorescent proteins can be formed inside a microreactor, using only the temperature-responsive property of ELPs. © 2009 The Royal Society of Chemistry.