Gregoire Seyrig

Ph.D. Candidate

2007-contd.

CV

seyriggr@msu.edu

Lyophilisation (freeze drying) of PCR mix in microfluidic channels

Diagnostic devices for in-field application are in increasing demand for various applications, including water and air safety. Our research group aims at developping a microfluidic biochip to detect simultaneously water and airborne pathogenic microorganisms. One of the bottlenecks of such a kind of device is the shelf life of the PCR mixes since its efficienty decreases strongly whith time and this, particularly at ambient temperature.

To get rid of this problem, we aim to develop a freeze drying procedure to allow stabilization at ambient temperature of PCR mixes in our microfluidic biochip. This is critical to insure a minimum hands-on time. The user will only have to add water and the sample in the biochip prior to make the reaction. Freeze drying (lyophilisation) is dehydratation operation which consists to remove water of a product by sublimation at low temperature (1). PCR mixes freeze drying procedure has already been developed but the informations about this are really sporadic even if freeze dry PCR mix are already available in the market (Ready-to-go PCR Beads, Amersham Biosciences, Piscataway, New Jersey).In order to achieve our goal different stages will be accomplished:

1. Reproduction of the published work (2)
2. Systematic evaluation of each PCR component
3. Adaptation in a microfluidic channel
4. Optimisation of the shelf life as a term of quality, efficienty and reproductivity

Figure 1. Performance of freeze-dried and fresh PCr mixes in capillary real time microPCR chips

References:

1- Franks, F, Cryo-Letters 1990, 11, 93-110