Stevan B. Jovanovich

Developmental validation of the GlobalFiler® express kit, a 24-marker STR assay, on the RapidHIT® System

Rapid DNA typing provides a transformative solution to help forensic laboratories and law enforcement agencies solve and prevent crimes. The RapidHIT(®) System is a fully integrated instrument with a simplified user interface enabling an operator to run the system and obtain a DNA profile from a sample in less than two hours. The integration and developmental validation of the NDIS-approved 24 loci GlobalFiler(®) Express kit expands the capabilities of the RapidHIT System to increase discrimination power, reduce adventitious matches, and improve cross-border data sharing capabilities. Developmental validation studies were performed according to the SWGDAM guidelines and tested several critical areas of performance including three sensitivity studies, inhibited samples, thermal cycling parameters, and cross-contamination. Validation studies indicate that the optimized PCR parameters and sensitivity of the system is capable of generating STR profiles from buccal or blood swab reference samples. Results were concordant with genotypes produced using standard bench thermal cyclers and capillary electrophoresis platforms. Furthermore, swabs can be retrieved from the system and re-run or reprocessed with traditional bench chemistries, e.g. Y-STRs, to gain additional information. Our results demonstrate that the GlobalFiler Express assay run on the RapidHIT System is reliable for generating profiles from reference samples after forensic review.

Sub-microliter DNA sequencing for capillary array electrophoresis

DNA sequencing from sub-microliter samples was demonstrated for capillary array electrophoresis by optimizing the analysis of 500 nl reaction aliquots of full-volume reactions and by preparing 500 nl reactions within fused-silica capillaries. Sub-microliter aliquots were removed from the pooled reaction products of 10 microl dye-primer cycle-sequencing reactions and analyzed without modifying either the reagent concentrations or instrument workflow. The impact of precipitation methods, resuspension buffers, and injection times on electrokinetic injection efficiency for 500 nl aliquots were determined by peak heights, signal-to-noise ratios, and changes in base-called readlengths. For 500 nl aliquots diluted to 5 microl in 60% formamide-1 mM EDTA and directly injected, a five-fold increase in signal-to-noise ratios was obtained by increasing injection times from 10 to 80 s without a corresponding increase in peak widths or reduction in readlengths. For 500 nl aliquots precipitated in alcohol, 80 +/- 5% template recovery and a two-fold decrease in conductivity was obtained, resulting in a two-fold increase in peak heights and 50 to 100 bases increase in readlengths. In a comparison of aliquot volumes and precipitation methods, equivalent readlengths were obtained for 500 nl, 4 microl, and 8 microl aliquots by simply adjusting the electrokinetic injection conditions. To ascertain the robustness of this methodology for genomic sequencing, 96 Arabidopsis thaliana subclones were sequenced, with a yield of 38 624 bases obtained from 500 nl aliquots versus 30 764 bases from standard scale reactions. To demonstrate 500 nl sample preparation, reactions were performed in fused-silica capillary reaction chambers using air-based thermal cycling. A readlength of 690 bases was obtained for the polymerase chain reaction product of an Arabidopsis subclone without modifying the reagent concentrations, post-reaction processing or electrokinetic injection workflow. These results demonstrated the fundamental feasibility of small-volume DNA sequencing for high-throughput capillary electrophoresis.

Developmental validation of a fully integrated sample-to-profile rapid human identification system for processing single-source reference buccal samples.

UNLABELLED Short tandem repeat (STR) DNA typing is a global standard for human identification. Current practice involves highly trained forensic analysts, operating in a laboratory setting, using multiple instruments to process samples and analyze the data. Here, we report the developmental validation of a fully integrated and automated DNA profiling system, the RapidHIT® System, capable of producing up to five high quality STR profiles with full controls in approximately 90min using PowerPlex®16 HS RapidHIT chemistry. The system integrates all sample handling steps: starting from lysis of cells on buccal swabs or other buccal sample types through DNA extraction, normalization, amplification,capillary array electrophoresis, detection, and integrated software analysis. The results describe the developmental validation of the RapidHIT™ System for buccal samples processed with the DNA IQ™ extraction chemistry using a guandinium chaotropic agent and paramagnetic beads followed by amplification using a modified version of PowerPlex 16 HS chemistry (PowerPlex 16 HS RapidHIT chemistry), and capillary electrophoresis with manual review of genotyping data following interpretation guidelines. All processing from the buccal swab to generation and processing of the profile occurs on the RapidHIT platform. RESULT are concordant with traditional methods, with 88% first pass success rates for both the CODIS and PowerPlex 16 loci. Average peak height ratios were 0.89 for buccal swabs. The system produces full profiles from swabs with at least 176 ng of saliva DNA. Rapid DNA identification systems will significantly enhance capabilities for forensic labs, intelligence, defense, law enforcement, refugee and immigration applications, and kinship analysis.

A flexible microfluidic processor for molecular biology: application to microarray sample preparation

We describe a programmable microfluidic system with onboard pumps and valves that has the ability to process reaction volumes in the sub-microlitre to hundred microlitre range. The flexibility of the architecture is demonstrated with a commercial molecular biology protocol for mRNA amplification, implemented without significant modification. The performance of the microchip system is compared to conventional bench processing at each stage of the multistep protocol, and DNA microarrays are used to assess the quality and performance of bench- and microchip-amplified RNA. The results show that the microchip system reactions are similar to bench control reactions at each step, and that the microchip- and bench-derived amplified RNAs are virtually indistinguishable in differential microarray analyses.