Highly sensitive mutation detection based on digital amplification coupled with hydrogel bead-array

摘要

In order to detect small amounts of mutants for early cancer diagnosis, we have developed the novel method of using amplicon-coated microbeads and single-moleeule-PCR in water-in-oil emulsions, which we coupled with a new detection platform, the hydrogel bead-array, a 3-D polyacrylamide gel network used as a carrier to immobilize the beads.rnRecently mutation detection has played an increasingly important role for early diagnosis of diseases. However, mutation detection in cancer is difficult as the amount of mutants at the early disease stage is far less than that of wild-type. Up to now, there are many techniques developed for mutation detection.