A modular integrated lab-on-a-chip platform for fast and highly efficient sample preparation for foodborne pathogen screening

摘要

Strict regulations govern food safety as the latter is of extremely high importance and a major public issue, while it is demanding in respect of analytical effort. The duration of common food analysis practices is typically 2-5 days. Microfluidics can reduce labor and analysis time to a few hours, proving its beneficial use and rendering the response of food industry as well as public safety agents faster. The aim of the present work is the fabrication and evaluation of a modular integrated Lab-on-Chip platform for sample preparation, accommodating bacteria capture, thermal lysis, DNA purification, and isothermal DNA amplification, addressing pathogen screening in milk samples for cell lysates corresponding to 500 cells. We note that individual modules have been tested to work down to 10 cells.