| Popis: |
Rapid, automated sample preparation of bacterial cells and spores is required for threat analysis by remotely deployed chemical and biological warning systems. Sandia is designing, building, and testing an automated front-end sample preparation system based on miniature and microfluidic components, with the goal of concentrating bacterial species collected from the air, harvesting and solubilizing proteins from them, and delivering them to Sandia’s MicroChemLab capillary gel electrophoresis system1,2 for analysis (Fig. 1). Miniature, motorized valves and pumps control flow between system components connected by fused silica capillaries (Fig. 4). Sample processing modules include concentration by dielectrophoresis in an array of insulating posts or by mechanical filtration; heat-activated chemical lysis; mechanical filtration; removal of chemical lysis agents by size exclusion chromatography (SEC); and in-capillary fluorescent labeling. |
