Panasonic and IMEC develop DNA testing chip that delivers results in an hour!

Panasonic and Belgian research lab IMEC have created a small chip that could test DNA within an hour! Well, Yes! That seems to save quite lot of time.

Testing can be done simply by just injecting the blood and a chemical into the chip, then everything is done by the chip itself. The fully-automated chip takes a drop of blood mixes with a chemical , prepares the DNA for PCR, and then runs the amplification on the DNA that were seperated during the previous method for sequencing (with conventional method, this could take two hours), the amplified DNA is then sent to a DNA filter via a  micropump where the DNA is separated for each section length. Then a newly developed electro-chemical sensor identifies SNPs.  So, on the whole it pre-processes and obtains all needed genetic information.

“This is the chip we’ve actually developed. As you can see, it’s less than half the size of a business card. It contains everything needed for testing DNA. Once a drop of blood is inserted, the chip completes the entire process, up to SNP detection.”

“Through careful attention to thermal separation design, we’ve achieved high-speed PCR, where 30 temperature cycles are completed in nine minutes. We think this is one of the fastest PCR systems in the world.”

This could not only enable doctors to get quick access to base pair sequences to detect diseases and abnormalities, but also provides them with all information to help them make better, more targeted precise decisions about medications and treatments. The company says that their focus is to make the whole system battery-powered so that it can be used to test genetically modified foods.

Via : Diginfo