Correction to Stable and Simple Immobilization of Proteinase K Inside Glass Tubes and Microfluidic Channels

Engyodontium album proteinase K (proK) is widely used for degrading proteinaceous impurities during the isolation of nucleic acid from biological samples, or in proteomics and prion research. Towards applications of proK in flow reactors, a simple method for the stable immobilization of proK inside glass micropipette tubes was developed. The immobilization of the enzyme was achieved by adsorption of a dendronized polymer-enzyme conjugate from aqueous solution. This conjugate was first synthesized from a polycationic dendronized polymer (denpol) and proK and consisted, on average, of 2000 denpol repeating units and 140 proK molecules, which were attached along the denpol chain via stable bis-aryl hydrazone bonds. Although the immobilization of proK inside the tube was based on non-specific, non-covalent interactions only, the immobilized proK did not leak from the tube and remained active during prolonged storage at 4 °C and during continuous operation at 25 °C and pH = 7.0. The procedure developed was successfully applied for the immobilization of proK on a glass/PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) microchip, which is a requirement for applications in the field of proK-based protein analysis with such type of microfluidic devices.