Fabrication of porous polymer monoliths in microfluidic chips for selective nucleic acid concentration and...

Efficient and rapid isolation of nucleic acids is of significant importance in the field of genomics for a variety of applications. Current techniques for the isolation of specific nucleic acids or genes typically involve multiple rounds of amplification of the target sequence using polymerase chain reaction. Described here is a recent development in the fabrication and modification of porous polymer monoliths for the selective concentration and extraction of nucleic acids sequences. The rigid monoliths are cast to shape and are tunable for functionalization using a variety of amine-terminated molecules including oligonucleotide capture probes. Efficient and rapid isolation of nucleic acids can be performed using polymer monoliths in microchannels in a time frame as short as 2 s. The described materials and methods offer the ability to perform concentration of nucleic acids in solution and elute purified samples in volumes as low as 3 microL without the requirement of altering salt concentration in the wash and elution buffers.