Chaotically Accelerated Polymerase Chain Reaction by Microscale Rayleigh-Benard Convection

摘要

Chemical processes can unfold in surprising and unpredictable ways when performed in the presence of chaotic advection. But the underlying interplay between reaction and flow remains poorly understood, and the "design" rules needed to rationally apply these effects are largely unknown. Here, we show how this fundamental coupling can be harnessed in flow fields generated by microscale thermal convection to achieve rapid biochemical replication of DNA through the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-a process that involves cyclically heating and cooling an aqueous reagent cocktail to temperatures corresponding to denaturation of the double-stranded (ds) template DNA (ca. 95 °C), annealing of primers at specific locations on the denatured single-stranded fragments (ca. 50-60 °C), and enzyme-catalyzed extension to synthesize the complementary strands (ca. 72 °C).