Capillary Instrument for High Speed DNA-Based Tumor Diagnosis

摘要

This project addresses the design and prototyping of a multiple- capillary (ultimately 96- channel) electrophoresis system that will be ideally suited for the rapid and inexpensive analysis of allele-specific and DNA- sequence-based breast-cancer diagnostic tests with high throughput. A fully- automated capillary electrophoresis system (as opposed to an electrophoresis instrument) will perform the following steps without human intervention: (1) prepare and purify DNA, ideally from blood or tissue samples, (2) mix DNA samples with PCR reagents, (3) thermally cycle and purify PCR products, (4) mix PCR samples with DNA sequencing reagents, (5) perform sequencing reactions (thermal cycling typically) and purify the fragments, (6) pre-run the capillaries and load the samples, (7) perform the electrophoresis and detect the DNA bands, (8) record and analyze the data, and (9) flush the capillaries after the previous run and fill the capillaries with fresh polymer solution. The present study will automate steps 6-9 of this process.