Labor-Saving Platform for Characterization of Membrane Proteins by Automated Monitoring and Data Reporting

This paper describes an automated platform for lipid bilayer studies, which dramatically reduces manual labor. Lipid bilayers are widely used to investigate the functions of membrane proteins in vitro. However, the experimental processes, such as monitoring of bilayer functionality during the experiment and analysis of protein properties after the experiment, have relied on manual labor. In this study, we propose a platform that automates the monitoring and post-analysis, which are the most critical and labor-intensive processes. The platform integrates three developed functions: (1) an acquisition system that obtains transmembrane current in real-time, (2) digital filters for the analysis of the current, and (3) a bilayer reformation system that immediately activates when the measurement failure is detected. Combining all, the platform enables automated monitoring of bilayer status, allowing us to continue the measurement for a long period without human supervision. It also allows us to automatically create reports of the analyzed data, saving the trouble of manual post-analysis. We applied the system to gather a large amount of data of alpha-hemolysin (aHL) to create a histogram of their electrophysiological conductance values. Not only were the values well-estimated, but the time of manual labor throughout the experiment was also reduced to 1 min, which was far less than the 2 h or more required in a conventional procedure.