Lab-On-A-Chip for DNA-Related Work

Tekmage writes "HP has announced the release of it's HP2100 bioanalyzer. It makes use of a little chip by Caliper Technologies. Yet another tool for the genetic engineers among us; Caliper describe various aspects of the tech here. "

DNA separation

[MartyC]

I didn't really get to the techy stuff on HP's site. I got distracted by "the Ultimate DNA separation game".

Or Arkanoid as it's also known.

smalls

[darklink]

i read about this a while back , i thought iti was pritty cool , i am still wondering how it will be used. will this give the beat cop the ability to do lab work in a flash , etc. will this help drug dealers check the potincy and what it is cut with on the spot with out that trust level our whole drug trade my fall throw , as if i realy wanted it to stay

this isn't all that new...

[kootch]

I remember searching EPA's web site a year or two ago, and seeing descriptions of gadgets that they were building that do the same thing as this bioanalyzer and more. They had gadgets that you could put a small amount of pond water in it and it would list all the known contaminants that were in the sample, they had ones that could test a few drops of blood for known diseases as well as do white blood cell counts, and tons of other little kewl gadgets.

There's a huge trend to take all the giant machines that scientists and doctors need for analysis and shrink them down into handhelds... this one by HP is nothing more than just another one that's hitting the market... except that it's backed by HP and has a small flash animation on its site.

Oh well.

I don't think it will be used like that...

[smoondog]

Things like this will probably be put to use most often by lab techs and researchers. Simplifying how one plays with DNA would be of great help to the field. Cops and Drug dealers probably won't use the technology until its use gets automated and streamlined. (Which I'm sure it is far from now....)


-- Moondog

Micro-labs

[upstateguy]

As a molecular geneticist who's actually used some of these types of devices (like Affymetrix's GeneChip analyzer...with an amazing HP laser scanner www.affymetrix.com), they are nothing short of amazing. The engineering problems are not so much the mechanical (designing silicon surfaces, circuits, etc.) but biological (i.e. the proteins, DNA, cell gunk get in the way, clog those micro-channels or the flouresent tags used in detection have to be so far apart to avoid misreads). Also, you need a REALLY high confidence level for the data they generate. Still, they are a marvel in the way that diagnostics will be able to utilize the load of information from all the genome sequencing projects. These devices are also planned for use as "biosensors" to be used as fast screening methods for biological terrorism (right now any idiot on earth can clog up tons of local, state and federal agencies by sending a fake anthrax warning out). And a tidy sum of money is being made available to make devices like this available (for example, today's announcement by the CDC to give another $40 million in grants for anti-bioterrorism efforts--http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19990915/ hl/bio10_1.html). Cheers, JD

Who put the sugar in Sydney Harbor?

[Wohali]

I just heard a really cool talk given by Mr. Neil Weste (co-author of a VERY famous VLSI textbook) about a chip he's been working on in association with DARPA which can detect such things as anthrax, ebola, and so on in very minute quantities.

The title of his paper, Who put the sugar in Sydney Harbor?, refers to the sensitivity of his chip. It's capable of detecting concentrations as small as a teaspoon of sugar placed in Sydney Harbor. That's impressive. Check out his abstract [computer.org] or nice non-technical article [che.com]. It's an interesting, entertaining, and not-too-technical read.

remember seeing something like this..

[Zurk]

I saw something like this at DARPA, but it was for optical work. A sort of MEMS device with mirrors on board a single silicon chip to experiment with light. Optical lab on a chip.

Argh!

[Yosemite Sue]

Drat, just when I thought I had an excuse to procrastinate ... I see no working game, just an image!

Anyone actually see a working copy of the Ultimate DNA Separation Game?

YS

MEMS community activity.

[Tekmage]

One of the reasons why this article caught my interest and I submitted it was because a co-worker attended this conference [www.cmc.ca]. Lab-on-a-chip (in general) seems to be a hot topic in the MEMS community.

HP's site terms of usage

[jvaarani]

Please notice that you should read HP:s terms of usage [hp.com] before accessing the webpage mentioned on the article above. At least I really hate these webpages or other services that say you comply their terms of access by using their service, so you don't have any chance to know their policy before you have already accepted it.

yeah yeah yeah....

[Dorao]

The system is designed for use by molecular biologists and biochemists working with polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) products, restriction enzyme digests or ribonucleic acid (RNA) preparations.

All this does is eliminate the use of agarose gels.(and staining with EtBr if neccesary)

The only great thing about this is the ammount of reagents you have to use (cutting down costs a bit), and cutting down the time to do an experiment.

I usually did restriction enzyme digests over night... and then have to run it on a gel, where as this can give you results in a minute or so.

This said, what really takes time is growing the cells so you can do your DNA/RNA extractions. (IIRC you need a min. of 1x10^6 cells to use UltraSpec(tm) to do the extraction). Also, PCR can take 2-3 hours depending on how many cycles. So, as long as you plan out your experiments like you should, time really isn't an issue here. (run a gel while going to lunch || think of new experiments || use the time to catch up on your lab note book *laugh*).

Therefor, I think that (especially if you are in academia) this tool is cool and all but not really too useful (unless of course you are in industry where the same thing has to be done over and over).

Inovations that I would like to see(although it might be a little off topic):


Bring Lego Mindstorm Biotech Edition into existance!!,
(including attachments to handle you favorite set of pipets & ability to combine (like voltron) to take care of bigger jobs like drag around that new Tris bucket)

Have you ever had to go into lab during the weekend or during holidays? (split cells, change media/add IL-2 and/or 12F6, Southern/Western/Northern blots that you let go over night? etc) Have you had to cut lunch short cause you forgot about a gel?
The solution is simple; Give all the tedious tech jobs to the lovable lego robots.

Experiments you come up get sent to the robots via the internet, so no need to go to lab! (more time for you play quake, surf the web for porn, what ever floats your boat :P)

Have them upload data into your mysql database and have a web browser interface so you can view your results at home, or get opinions from your fellow collegues in Japan. (GIFgraph for spiffy graphs of your data, pdfLib for those who want a print out so they can paste it into their lab notebook).

New techniques? New tool? No problem. Just modify your little robots. (the only reason you have to go into lab... to play with lego) now wouldn't this be cool!


On a more serious note though... What I would like to see is a PCR machine that you give primers (with the oligo sequences of course) and the DNA/RNA sample. Have the machine try multiple combinations of adjuvents & Mg2+/Buffer concentrations to tell you in the morning what combination works best (run on gel or use the lab-chip). Maybe even give you a epidorf tube labeled and full of the product you want to use in further experiments.

Well, I have rambled long enough again.

Dorao

Re:Micro-labs

[Anonymous Coward]

uhm.... this one ain't so amazing, go read their protocol pdfs for details. It runs 12 samples in 1/2 hour with about 15 min prep time on top of that. We can load 135 samples on one gel and have them run in 45 minutes, with 5 min prep time (for pcr frags). I fail to see how such a massive slow down in efficiency could justify spending 18 times more. Where it might of been useful would be in rest. frag analysis since running on pfg gels takes sooo long but then the largest frag they could analyze is only 7.5 kb (and looking at their examples I doubt very much the resolution at anything over 5 kb is reliable)As to use in the field well the prep is requiring centrifugation so don't look like beat cops'll be using them on site). And another thing :) If you look at the picture it's obvious they didn't design it with biologists in mind since the wells are in a 4x4 array instead of one row of 12(I guess they never heard of plate preps or noticed all the 12 channel pipets in the world) My vote is for "NOT THERE YET", maybe in a few generations, but I dunno how small a capillary can go.

Re:Argh!

[The CrapHead!]

See the bottom of the page.. "The game requires the Macromedia Flash 4 Plugin"..

Re:Argh!

[The CrapHead!]

Hmm.. I just tried the game.. Seems like the link is wrong.. It points to http://chem.external.hp.com/cag/products/game_inde x_1.htm, which just seems to be an image.. The game is at http://chem.external.hp.com /cag/products/game_index.htm [hp.com]..