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US 11,162,137 B2Granted
Apparatus, system, and method using immiscible-fluid-discrete-volumes
AssigneeApplied Biosystems, LLC
InventorsLinda G. Lee, Sam L. Woo, Congcong Ma, Richard T. Reel, Mark F. Oldham, David M. Cox, Benjamin G. Schroeder, Jon M. Sorenson, Willy Wiyatno
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Various embodiments of the teachings relate to a system or method for sample preparation or analysis in biochemical or molecular biology procedures. The sample preparation can involve small volume processed in discrete portions or segments or slugs, herein referred to as discrete volumes. A molecular biology procedure can be nucleic acid analysis. Nucleic acid analysis can be an integrated DNA amplification/DNA sequencing procedure.
Claims19
A system comprising:
- a first conduit having a circular cross section having a maximum dimension and configured to flow an aqueous sample fluid containing at least one molecule of a target nucleic acid;
- an intersecting conduit intersecting the first conduit and configured to flow a spacing fluid that is immiscible with the aqueous sample fluid;
- a spacing fluid introduction unit configured to inject the spacing fluid by contacting the aqueous sample fluid in the first conduit to provide a first plurality of aqueous droplets comprising a single molecule of the target nucleic acid and a second plurality of aqueous droplets containing no molecules of the target nucleic acid, the aqueous droplets being separated within the first conduit by the spacing fluid, the conduits configured so that the aqueous droplets have a maximum dimension that is less than the maximum dimension of the first conduit;
- a thermal cycler configured to amplify the target nucleic acid in each of the first plurality of aqueous droplets to form an amplicon;
- and
- a fluorescent signal detector and a second conduit, the second conduit configured to receive and flow the aqueous droplets from the thermal cycler, the fluorescent signal detector configured to detect the first plurality of aqueous droplets by detecting fluorescence from the first plurality of aqueous droplets while flowing in the second conduit.
3 more elements
A system comprising:
- a first conduit configured to flow an aqueous sample fluid containing at least one molecule of a target nucleic acid;
- an intersecting conduit intersecting the first conduit and configured to flow a spacing fluid that is immiscible with an aqueous sample fluid;
- a spacing fluid introduction unit configured to inject the spacing fluid by contacting the aqueous sample fluid in the first conduit to provide a first plurality of aqueous droplets comprising at least one molecule of the target nucleic acid and a second plurality of aqueous droplets containing no molecules of the target nucleic acid;
- a thermal cycler configured to amplify the target nucleic acid in each of the first plurality of aqueous droplets to form an amplicon;
- and
- a fluorescent signal detector and a second conduit, the second conduit configured to receive and flow the droplets from the thermal cycler, the fluorescent signal detector configured to detect the first plurality of aqueous droplets by detecting fluorescence from the first plurality of aqueous droplets while flowing in the second conduit.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.