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

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.