Steven J. Young

A new generation of PCR instruments and nucleic acid concentration systems

Publisher Summary The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique has clearly evolved into an important tool for researchers and clinicians. This has been afforded by the commercialization of robust and dependable instruments for thermal cycling and, recently, with homogenous fluorescence detection.. The state-of-the-art instruments that include real-time, homogeneous, fast thermal cycling, and quantitative detection capabilities still leave significant opportunities for improvements. Efforts to develop PCR on a chip or micromachined/miniaturized systems have shown some interesting capabilities, but still fall short of providing the types of results that surpass or even equal those of commercial systems. However, in the future the development of new nucleic acid systems based on some of the principles from such research devices will probably occur. This chapter describes the extension of previous work based on silicon micromachining that has shown equivalent and improved performance over commercial systems. Other improvements over commercial systems have been discovered. These include new graphical user interface, independent control of each reaction site, modularity, and rapid thermal cycling of large volumes. Ultimately, the chapter concludes with anticipation that one day all the processing and homogenous quantitative detection will occur in one low-cost disposable, integrated system, which will take PCR to the new level of utility.