Development of a fully integrated microfluidic system for sensing infectious viral disease

An active micromixer system utilizing the magnetic force was developed and examined for its ability to facilitate the mixing of more than two fluid flows. The mixing performance of the active micromixer was evaluated in aqueous-aqueous systems including dyes for visual observation. A complete analytical microfluidic system was developed by integrating various functional modules into a single chip, thus allowing cell lysis, sample preparation, purification of intracellular molecules, and subsequent analysis. Upon loading the cell samples and lysis solution into the mixing chamber, the integrated microfluidic device allows efficient cell disruption by rotation of a micromagnetic disk and control of mixing time using the Teflon-coated hydrophobic film as a microvalve. This inflow is followed by separating the cell debris and contaminated proteins from the cell lysate sample using the acrylamide (AAm)-functionalized SPE. The inflow of partially purified cell lysate sample containing the gold binding polypeptide (GBP)-fusion protein was bound onto the gold micropatterns by means of its metal binding affinity. The GBP-fusion method allows immobilization of proteins in bioactive forms onto the gold surface without surface modification suitable for studying antigen-antibody interaction. It was used for the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), an infectious viral disease, as an example case.