scholarly journals A Self-Contained Portable Polymerase-Chain-Reaction System Integrated with Electromagnetic Mini-Actuators for Bi-Directional Fluid Transport

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-364
Author(s):  
B. T. Chia ◽  
S.-A. Yang ◽  
M.-Y. Cheng ◽  
C.-W. Lin ◽  
Y.-J. Yang

ABSTRACTIn this paper, the development of a portable polymerase chain reaction (PCR) device is presented. Integrating electromagnetic mini-actuators for bi-directional fluid transport, the proposed device, whose dimension is 67mm × 66mm × 25mm, can be fully operated with a 5V DC voltage. The device consists of four major parts: A disposable channel chip in which PCR mixture is manipulated and reacted, a heater chip which generates different temperature zones for PCR reaction, a linear actuator array for pumping PCR mixture, and a circuit module for controlling and driving the system. The advantages of the device include the rapid temperature responses associated with continuous-flow-type PCR devices, as well as the programmable thermal cycling associated with chamber-type PCR devices. The thermal characteristics are measured and discussed. PCR amplification is successfully performed for the 122 bp segment of MCF-7/adr cell line. Due to its small footprint, this self-contained system potentially can be employed for point-of-care (POC) applications.

1996 ◽  
Vol 44 (10) ◽  
pp. 1205-1207 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Dakhama ◽  
V Macek ◽  
J C Hogg ◽  
R G Hegele

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a powerful method that allows enzymatic amplification of rate target nucleic acid sequences. It has been applied to the amplification of viral genomes from paraffin-embedded pathology specimens. However, interpretation of negative results requires amplification of a housekeeping gene such as beta-actin. In the present study we used specific oligonucleotide primers previously designed to amplify both the genomic DNA and the mRNA transcript from paraffin-embedded tissue. These products have predicted sizes of 250 BP and 154 BP, respectively, but our results showed that PCR amplification only (without reverse transcription) unexpectedly generated the 154-BP product. Further investigation of the nature of this product demonstrated that it originated from the amplification of DNA, not RNA. We conclude that the 154-BP product generated by these primers cannot be exclusively considered as beta-actin RNA product and should not be used to assess successful extraction of RNA, to ascertain its integrity, or to normalize for the total amount of RNA assayed by RT-PCR from paraffin-embedded tissue.


Author(s):  
Dwiyitno Dwiyitno ◽  
Stefan Hoffman ◽  
Koen Parmentier ◽  
Chris Van Keer

Fish and seafood products has been commonly targeted for fraudulent activities. For that reason, authentication of fish and seafood products is important to protect consumers from fraudulent and adulteration practices, as well as to implement traceability regulation. From the viewpoint of food safety, authenticity is beneficial to protect public from serious food poisoning incidents, such as due to ingestion of toxic species. Since DNA based identification depends on the nucleic acid polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the quantity and quality/purity of DNA will contribute significantly to the species authentication. In the present study, different DNA extraction and purification methods (3 classical methods and one commercial kit) were compared to produce the better isolated DNA for PCR amplification. Additionally, different methods for the estimation of DNA concentration and purity which is essential for PCR amplification efficiency were also evaluated. The result showed that classical DNA extraction methods (based on TNES-Urea) yielded a higher amount of DNA (11.30-323.60 ng/g tissue) in comparison to commercial kit/Wizard Promega (5.70-83.45 ng/g tissue). Based on the purity of DNA extract (A260/280), classical DNA extraction method produced relatively similar on DNA quality to the commercial kit (1.79-2.12). Interestingly, all classical methods produced DNA with A260/280 ratio of more than 2.00 on the blue mussel, in contrast with commercial kit. The commercial kit also produced better quality of DNA compared to the classical methods, showing the higher efficiency in PCR amplification. NanoDrop is promising as cheap, robust and safe UV-spectrophotometer method for DNA quantification, as well as the purity evaluation.Keywords: seafood authenticity, DNA isolation, polymerase chain reaction, NanoDrop, Picogreen


2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (11) ◽  
pp. 3161-3164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saad Masri ◽  
Heidi Rast ◽  
Teresa Ripley ◽  
Delano James ◽  
Margaret Green ◽  
...  

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