Chemically-reacting flows are some of the toughest problems to unravel. In this new study, researchers found that the very act of flowing through narrow channels can change the speed of chemical reactions. In particular, they found that protein molecules carried through a capillary tube (comparable in size to human capillaries) changed their local shape as a result of the shear forces they experienced. Those changes actually sped up the proteins’ chemical reactions compared to the reaction speed for the chemicals in bulk.
That finding suggests two important takeaways: 1) chemicals may be absorbed in the human bloodstream differently in capillaries than in other parts of the cardiovascular system, and 2) mimicking these tiny capillaries in microfluidic devices could be useful in speeding up certain biochemical reactions. (Image credit: top – KazuN, visual abstract – T. Hakala et al.; research credit: T. Hakala et al.; via Science; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)
