Clive Smith

I am currently working on our ESI Mine technology to screen synthetic biology libraries as single phenotypes by picodroplet ESI mass spectrometry. We have a Technology Strategy Board Grant with Imperial College to screen libraries of E. coli that produce an unnatural amino-acid. The project is quite complex from a microfluidic viewpoint in that when we reinject our 500 pL microdroplets on to our MS biochip we first carry out an asymmetric split (ca. 9:1). This enables us to recover a sample of live bacteria, whilst the larger microdroplet is analysed by the mass spectrometer.