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A high-speed, high-performance on-chip integrated reverse transcription (RT)-microchip

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Abstract

This report introduces an on-chip integrated reverse transcription (RT)-microchip, which includes two genetic functionalities of RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis. In the RNA extraction compartment, RNA is extracted from peripheral blood lysate within 1 min, by lateral magnetophoresis using magnetic oligo-dT beads. The extracted RNA is then collected and used directly to produce cDNA in the cDNA synthesis microchamber, which is monolithically integrated with the RNA extraction compartment. To verify the superiority of the proposed RT-microchip, RT-PCR amplification was performed using cDNA harvested from the RT-microchip, and the results were compared with those obtained using typical RNA extraction methods such as a silica matrix column and magnetic oligo-dT beads. The RT-PCR amplification results using 100 μl of blood showed that the intensity of the bands in gel electrophoresis of the RT-microchip was 2-fold stronger than that of the silica matrix column and 2.65-fold stronger than that of the magnetic oligo-dT beads. The results demonstrate that the RT-microchip technique is the most sensitive of the tested methods.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (Grant No. 2011-0008248 to K.-H. Han) and by a grant of the National R&D Program for Cancer Control, Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family affairs, Republic of Korea (0920040 to I.-H. Choi).

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Correspondence to Ki-Ho Han.

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Lee, H., Han, N., Choi, IH. et al. A high-speed, high-performance on-chip integrated reverse transcription (RT)-microchip. Biomed Microdevices 15, 9–15 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-012-9682-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-012-9682-3

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