Fully Integrated Genetic Analysis System

An integrated interface was designed to connect the platform in Chap. 2 and the module in Chap. 3 together forming a fully integrated system for automated genetic analysis. The chips and the instrument were also upgraded correspondingly. The upgraded integrated chip is a compound material one that uses plastic chip for sample preparation and glass chip for capillary electrophoresis detection. The cheap plastic chip is disposable while the glass chip is reusable after cleaned up after each run. A special shaped sample electrode for electrophoresis was designed as the core component of the integrated interface. The specific designed sample electrode was verified to be able to mix the PCR products with the premixed, and transport the mixture from PMMA chip onto glass chip. With this interface, a new fully integrated “sample-in-answer-out” genetic analysis system was constructed. The integrated system was verified on reliability and repeatability. And the limit of detection was also determined. The system was applied for rapid pharmacogenetic typing of multiple warfarin-related single-nucleotide polymorphisms and the test results met the design requirements.