Begin by preparing a 1 to 20 dilution of black Indian ink and glycerol system buffer, then centrifuge for 10 minutes at 15, 000g at room temperature. Add 40 microliters of ink solution and glycerol system buffer to the first section of the 384 well plate. Now add 25 microliters of glycerol system buffer to all dilution one wells and 40 microliters to all dilution two, three, and four wells.
Add 25 microliters of extracted glycan sample to the dilution one wells to dilute the samples in a one-to-one ratio. Serially dilute each sample four times by transferring 10 microliters from the dilution one to the dilution two well, then gently mix using a pipette. Repeat the process by transferring 10 microliters of the sample from the dilution two to the dilution three well.
After repeating the process for the dilution four well, discard 10 microliters from it so that all wells have a final volume of 40 microliters. Add 40 microliters of ink solution and glycerol system buffer to the final plate. Then cover the plate with an adhesive cover before centrifuging it for 10 minutes at 3000g at room temperature.
To print the samples on the nitrocellulose membrane, start by purging the print head and capillaries multiple times with glycerol system buffer. Initiate a test print run by loading a plate with the buffer alone. To configure the instrument to print directly from the clean buffer reservoir, click on File, followed by New, then choose Print Run.
Choose the microplate type and change the slide settings accordingly. Next, change the mini array settings before editing the spot property settings. Click on the Overview tab to view the plate.
Finally, under the Options tab, select Using buffer and calculate printing time before allocating file locations to save the file. After saving the location, press on Start Print Run to proceed with the run. While printing extracted glycan samples, program the system as before.
Under the Options tab, click on Using source microplates. Finally, save the unique grid file generated for the printed microarray for downstream analysis. Defined glycan standards were also included in the printed microarrays as positive controls.
The map binding profile obtained for the selected glycan standards corresponds to previously reported epitope specificities.
