Automated on-disc total RNA extraction from whole blood towards point-of-care for early-stage diagnostics

摘要

We present a novel integrated, centrifugo-pneumatic\udmicro-homogenizer (“μHomogenizer”) for automated\udsample preparation and total RNA extraction from whole\udblood. Using a Trizol based protocol, this novel\udμHomogenizer efficiently lyses whole blood spiked with\udE. coli, retains the organic-mixed fraction and yields the\udaqueous phase with the total RNA content. By the\udinterplay of microfluidic design and a protocol of\udrotational frequencies, we concatenate (and parallelize) a\udsequence of five subsequent liquid handling operations\udthat complete in less than 10 minutes. A comparison of\udthe total nucleotide content yields similar performance as\udconventional, essentially manual off-disc sample\udpreparation methods.