Skip to main content

Lund University Publications

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

High-Throughput Separation of Long DNA in Deterministic Lateral Displacement Arrays

Ström, Oskar E. LU orcid ; Beech, Jason P. LU and Tegenfeldt, Jonas O. LU orcid (2022) In Micromachines 13(10).
Abstract

Length-based separation of DNA remains as relevant today as when gel electrophoresis was introduced almost 100 years ago. While new, long-read genomics technologies have revolutionised accessibility to powerful genomic data, the preparation of samples has not proceeded at the same pace, with sample preparation often constituting a considerable bottleneck, both in time and difficulty. Microfluidics holds great potential for automated, sample-to-answer analysis via the integration of preparatory and analytical steps, but for this to be fully realised, more versatile, powerful and integrable unit operations, such as separation, are essential. We demonstrate the displacement and separation of DNA with a throughput that is one to five orders... (More)

Length-based separation of DNA remains as relevant today as when gel electrophoresis was introduced almost 100 years ago. While new, long-read genomics technologies have revolutionised accessibility to powerful genomic data, the preparation of samples has not proceeded at the same pace, with sample preparation often constituting a considerable bottleneck, both in time and difficulty. Microfluidics holds great potential for automated, sample-to-answer analysis via the integration of preparatory and analytical steps, but for this to be fully realised, more versatile, powerful and integrable unit operations, such as separation, are essential. We demonstrate the displacement and separation of DNA with a throughput that is one to five orders of magnitude greater than other microfluidic techniques. Using a device with a small footprint (23 mm × 0.5 mm), and with feature sizes in the micrometre range, it is considerably easier to fabricate than parallelized nano-array-based approaches. We show the separation of 48.5 kbp and 166 kbp DNA strands achieving a significantly improved throughput of 760 ng/h, compared to previous work and the separation of low concentrations of 48.5 kbp DNA molecules from a massive background of sub 10 kbp fragments. We show that the extension of DNA molecules at high flow velocities, generally believed to make the length-based separation of long DNA difficult, does not place the ultimate limitation on our method. Instead, we explore the effects of polymer rotations and intermolecular interactions at extremely high DNA concentrations and postulate that these may have both negative and positive influences on the separation depending on the detailed experimental conditions.

(Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
concentration effects, deterministic lateral displacement, high throughput, long DNA sample preparation, microfluidic separation
in
Micromachines
volume
13
issue
10
article number
1754
pages
16 pages
publisher
MDPI AG
external identifiers
  • scopus:85140979589
  • pmid:36296107
ISSN
2072-666X
DOI
10.3390/mi13101754
project
Microfluidic Preparation and Transport of Long DNA using Pillar Arrays
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
id
567512e0-3839-45b5-acdb-83435462c803
date added to LUP
2022-11-10 14:12:36
date last changed
2024-06-27 21:58:06
@article{567512e0-3839-45b5-acdb-83435462c803,
  abstract     = {{<p>Length-based separation of DNA remains as relevant today as when gel electrophoresis was introduced almost 100 years ago. While new, long-read genomics technologies have revolutionised accessibility to powerful genomic data, the preparation of samples has not proceeded at the same pace, with sample preparation often constituting a considerable bottleneck, both in time and difficulty. Microfluidics holds great potential for automated, sample-to-answer analysis via the integration of preparatory and analytical steps, but for this to be fully realised, more versatile, powerful and integrable unit operations, such as separation, are essential. We demonstrate the displacement and separation of DNA with a throughput that is one to five orders of magnitude greater than other microfluidic techniques. Using a device with a small footprint (23 mm × 0.5 mm), and with feature sizes in the micrometre range, it is considerably easier to fabricate than parallelized nano-array-based approaches. We show the separation of 48.5 kbp and 166 kbp DNA strands achieving a significantly improved throughput of 760 ng/h, compared to previous work and the separation of low concentrations of 48.5 kbp DNA molecules from a massive background of sub 10 kbp fragments. We show that the extension of DNA molecules at high flow velocities, generally believed to make the length-based separation of long DNA difficult, does not place the ultimate limitation on our method. Instead, we explore the effects of polymer rotations and intermolecular interactions at extremely high DNA concentrations and postulate that these may have both negative and positive influences on the separation depending on the detailed experimental conditions.</p>}},
  author       = {{Ström, Oskar E. and Beech, Jason P. and Tegenfeldt, Jonas O.}},
  issn         = {{2072-666X}},
  keywords     = {{concentration effects; deterministic lateral displacement; high throughput; long DNA sample preparation; microfluidic separation}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  number       = {{10}},
  publisher    = {{MDPI AG}},
  series       = {{Micromachines}},
  title        = {{High-Throughput Separation of Long DNA in Deterministic Lateral Displacement Arrays}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13101754}},
  doi          = {{10.3390/mi13101754}},
  volume       = {{13}},
  year         = {{2022}},
}