Rapid and enhanced proteolytic digestion using electric-field-oriented enzyme reactor

We have created a novel enzyme reactor using electric field-mediated orientation and immobilization of proteolytic enzymes (trypsin/chymotrypsin) on biocompatible PVDF membranes in a continuous flow-through chamber. Using less than 5 minutes, this reactor in various enzyme combinations can produce enhanced rapid digestion for standardized prototypic proteins, hydrophilic proteins and hydrophobic transmembrane proteins when compared to in-solution techniques. With improved digestive efficiency, our reactor improved the overall functional analysis of lipid raft proteomes by identifying more closely functionally linked proteins and elucidated a richer set of biological processes and pathways linked to the proteins than traditional in-solution methods.