R&D: Nanoparticle-Coated Microfluidic Chip for Automated, Non-Destructive Extraction of Encapsulated DNA in Storage

Chemical Science has published an article written by Xingyu Jiang, Chunyang Geng, School of Life Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, 2 Yikuang Road, Nangang District, Harbin 150001, P. R. China, and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Biomaterials, Department ofBiomedical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, No 1088, Xueyuan Rd., Xili, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 518055, Guangdong, P. R. China, and Shaoqin Liu, School of Life Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, 2 Yikuang Road, Nangang District, Harbin 150001, P. R. China.

Abstract: “DNA data storage based on tubes as physical storage carriers have been developed to solve the problem of the exponential growth of information. Compact disk (CD)-microfluidics that employs centrifugal forces for fluidic manipulation offers an attractive alternative which integrates complex assays onto a miniaturized platform to result in automation for DNA data storage. In this work, we develop a CD microfluidic chip modified with nanoparticles for accurate fluid flow control. The nanoparticle coating turns microchannels into valves or pumps, which reduces the error in fluidic control from 62% to 6%. Based on the nanoparticle coating, the chip integrates demineralization, nucleic acid amplification, and re-mineralization functions for automated, non-destructive information extraction. We prove the functionality of the chip with mineralized data DNA. Compared to purely manual operation and traditional amplification technique, the microfluidic chip saves human power and time consumption, demonstrating an essential contribution to the development of DNA data storage.“