A microfabrication-based approach to quantitative isothermal titration calorimetry

Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) directly measures heat evolved in a chemical reaction to determine equilibrium binding properties of biomolecular systems. Conventional ITC instruments are expensive, use complicated design and construction, and require long analysis times. Microfabricated calorimetric devices are promising, although they have yet to allow accurate, quantitative ITC measurements of biochemical reactions. This paper presents a microfabrication-based approach to integrated, quantitative ITC characterization of biomolecular interactions. The approach integrates microfabricated differential calorimetric sensors with microfluidic titration. Biomolecules and reagents are introduced at each of a series of molar ratios, mixed, and allowed to react. The reaction thermal power is differentially measured, and used to determine the thermodynamic profile of the biomolecular interactions. Implemented in a microdevice featuring thermally isolated, well-defined reaction volumes with minimized fluid evaporation as well as highly sensitive thermoelectric sensing, the approach enables accurate and quantitative ITC measurements of protein-ligand interactions under different isothermal conditions. Using the approach, we demonstrate ITC characterization of the binding of 18-Crown-6 with barium chloride, and the binding of ribonuclease A with cytidine 2′-monophosphate within reaction volumes of approximately 0.7 µL and at concentrations down to 2 mM. For each binding system, the ITC measurements were completed with considerably reduced analysis times and material consumption, and yielded a complete thermodynamic profile of the molecular interaction in agreement with published data. This demonstrates the potential usefulness of our approach for biomolecular characterization in biomedical applications.