To meet the requirements of infectious diseases identification, a sealed and fully enclosed cartridge with self-contained reagents was developed. The inlet and outlet ports of the cartridge are self-sealing. The waste produced during the diagnostic process was collected in a waste bag, which is enclosed in the cartridge. Two different types of waste bags were designed to reduce the overall thickness of the cartridge. A silicon chip with filter, binder and mixer components was integrated into the microfluidic cartridge for the extraction of the nucleic acid sample from the infectious virus sample. By using a switch valve the nucleic acid sample and waste were split and collected in a PCR tube and a waste bag respectively. The PCR tube, modified with self-sealing elastomer cap, was used for collecting the nucleic acid. The whole extraction process was carried out automatically in a small table-top actuator system. With the dengue virus as the input sample, RNA (ribonucleic acid) is extracted and subjected to RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) which detected the diagnostic size of the target amplicon.
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