Miniaturized PCR chips for nucleic acid amplification and analysis: latest advances and future trends

Zhang, Chunsun; Xing, Da

On-chip DNA hybridization integrated with PCR. DNA hybridization is a highly selective and sensitive reaction which takes place between target DNA/RNA and a DNA probe. With the advent of microfabrication techniques, the miniaturization of the DNA probe detection has proven to be feasible, and both DNA hybridization and PCR amplification can be incorporated on a single chip to directly detect the PCR products. For example, Guttenberg et al. used the on-chip SAW pump to combine the PCR amplification with the PCR product hybridization detection (77) . Hashimoto et al. applied the PCR and/ or LDR chips combined to hybridization microarrays to detect low-abundance DNA point mutations in a continuous-flow format (59, 60) . The coupling of functional biochip and informational biochip not only allows functional operations such as sample preparation and PCR amplification by controlling the biological microfluids, but also provides information on the amount, sequence and even DNA/RNA target source through DNA hybridization microarrays.