Bi, M.; Zhao, L.; Tian, Z.

Instant micro- and macro-preparative droplet reaction assisted by hand shaking (shake reaction) was found and observed, where reactions were carried out inside aqueous droplets dispersed in an organic solvent. This shake reaction was successfully benchmarked with both organic reactions of protein reduction by dithiothreitol and alkylation by iodoacetamide as well as biological reaction of protein digestion by enzyme trypsin. The reaction time of shake reaction was substantially shortened from the traditional bulk solution reactions, specifically 1 min for reduction (from 20 min), 1 min for alkylation (from 30 min), 5 min for digestion (from 960 min). The high efficiency of shake reaction comes from the micro-nano droplet formation assisted by shaking. Shake reaction can arguably be extended to any liquid-phase inorganic, organic and biological reactions from micro- to macro-preparative scale, and thus undoubtedly find wide applications in both academic research and industry production.