Separation of Sperm and Epithelial Cells in a Microfluidic Device: An Automated Method for High Efficiency, High Purity Separations.

The aim of this proposal is to produce a microfabricated device method for obtaining male and female fractions of DNA in a fast, automated, low-cost manner that will provide improved efficiency and purity in comparison with conventional differential extraction. The researcher will use acoustic differential extraction (ADE), which has been demonstrated as a method for trapping of sperm cells in a microchannel. This process will then be integrated, on a single device, with a solid phase extraction process to obtain purified DNA from the male and female fractions. The integrated device will accept sperm cell/epithelial cell lysate mixtures produced with the first step (mild lysis) of the current extraction protocol and trap the sperm cells, while collecting the epithelial cell DNA. The sperm cells will then be lysed and the DNA from both fractions separately purified on-chip.

ca/ncf