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Microchannel DNA fragmentation
Molecular diagnostics using small sample volumes made possible with lab-on-a-chip (LOC) systems are steadily increasing in importance. Sample pre-treatment is one of the most important steps in applying LOC technology to real world applications and DNA fragmentation is a sample pretreatment step for nucleic acid analysis, which is important for rapid hybridization reaction kinetics and the production of genomic DNA libraries and is often a critical and sometimes rate-limiting step in the DNA sequencing pipeline. We are developing a LOC device that is capable of fragmenting DNA into small fragment lengths for on-chip molecular diagnostics. DNA fragmentation using hydrodynamic shearing force is one of the most efficient methods and is ideally suited for LOC formats. During fragmentation, the acceleration of the DNA solutions in microchannels creates drag forces (extensional strain forces) that stretch the DNA until its molecular bonds begin to break and the DNA snaps into fragments. The Fragmentation of the DNA continues until the pieces are too short for the drag forces to break the molecular bonds. The final fragment is determined by the flow rate of the fluid and the size of the orifice. We are developing new methods to reduce the typically large fragmentation pressures ∆P required for reliable fragmentation.
Microchannel DNA fragmentation chip. Hydrodynamic shearing involves a pressure drop ∆P=P1-P2 that stretches the DNA molecules until fragmention into smaller units. We are developing chips to fragment genomic DNA into ~2k bp average fragment lengths.
Contact information
Dr. Lingling Shui and Dr. Edwin Carlen
BIOS Lab on a Chip Group
MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology
University of Twente
E-mail: l.shui@utwente.nl & e.t.carlen@utwente.nl
