A microfluidic system for rapid nucleic acid analysis based on real-time convective PCR at point-of-care testing

A microfluidic system for rapid nucleic acid analysis based on real-time convective PCR is developed. To perform ‘sample-in, answer-out’ nucleic acid analysis, a microfluidic chip is developed to efficiently extract nucleic acid, and meanwhile convective PCR (CPCR) is applied for rapid nucleic acid amplification. With an integrated microfluidic chip consisting of reagent pre-storage chambers, a lysis & wash chamber, an elution chamber and a waste chamber, nucleic acid extraction based on magnetic beads can be automatically performed for a large size of test sample within a limited time. Based on an easy-to-operate strategy, different pre-stored reagents can be conveniently released for consecutive reaction at different steps. To achieve efficient mixing, a portable companion device is developed to introduce properly controlled 3-D actuation to magnetic beads in nucleic acid extraction. In CPCR amplification, PCR reagent can be spontaneously and repeatedly circulated between hot and cool zones of the reactor for space-domain thermal cycling based on pseudo-isothermal heating. A handheld real-time CPCR device is developed to perform nucleic acid amplification and in-situ detection. To extend the detection throughput, multiple handheld real-time CPCR devices can be grouped together by a common control system. It is demonstrated that influenza A (H1N1) viruses with the reasonable concentration down to 1.0 TCID(50)/ml can be successfully detected with the microfluidic system.