Megapixel PCR for faster diagnostics
12 Aug 2011 by Evoluted New Media
A new ‘megapixel’ DNA measurement platform could revolutionise genetic diagnostics and screening promising faster and more accurate results.
A new ‘megapixel’ DNA measurement platform could revolutionise genetic diagnostics and screening promising faster and more accurate results. A new ‘megapixel’ DNA measurement platform could revolutionise genetic diagnostics and screening promising faster and more accurate results.
The digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) device uses liquid surface tension rather than systems of microscopic valves to partition DNA samples into arrays of 1,000,000 chambers or more. It enables the direct counting of single molecules isolated in individual chamber and improves on the density of reaction chambers in traditional PCR by a factor of 100, therefore improving performance.
“This solves some major technical issues that have limited the scale and accuracy of traditional digital PCR techniques,” said Carl Hansen, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s department of physics and astronomy where the device was developed.
“It creates defect-free arrays of millions of uniform volume sub-reactions, and controls dehydration of these reactions during thermocycling.
The device could improve a range of genetic diagnostics and screenings where precise measurement is crucial – including the early detection of cancer, prenatal diagnostics, detection of pathogens in foods and the analysis of single cell gene expression.
Furthermore, the new megapixel technique has set new benchmarks in detecting rare mutations – defined as the lowest measurable ratio of two target sequences differing by a single nucleotide variation. It’s also set new limits in detection of subtle differences in sequence abundance.
“Our solution, or something using the same technique, could enable a new degree of precision in measurements in biomedical research and diagnostics,” said Hansen. “The dramatic increase in assay density has important implications for the adoption of digital PCR as an economical, fast and routine analytical tool.”
The greatest number of chambers available in commercially available digital PCR platforms using integrated micro-valves is 36,960. Further scalability is limited by the maximum density at which valves may be reliably fabricated, but this new digital PCR platform can be scaled up to approximately 10,000,000 chambers on a standard one inch format.
The megapixel technology made its debut in Nature Methods.
