Flow-through Capture and in Situ Amplification Can Enable Rapid Detection of a Few Single Molecules of Nucleic Acids from Several Milliliters of Solution

Detecting nucleic acids (NAs) at zeptomolar concentrations (few molecules per milliliter) currently requires expensive equipment and lengthy processing times to isolate and concentrate the NAs into a volume that is amenable to amplification processes, such as PCR or LAMP. Shortening the time required to concentrate NAs and integrating this procedure with amplification on-device would be invaluable to a number of analytical fields, including environmental monitoring and clinical diagnostics. Microfluidic point-of-care (POC) devices have been designed to address these needs, but they are not able to detect NAs present in zeptomolar concentrations in short time frames because they require slow flow rates and/or they are unable to handle milliliter-scale volumes. In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally investigate a flow-through capture membrane that solves this problem by capturing NAs with high sensitivity in a short time period, followed by direct detection via amplification. Theoretical predictions guided the choice of physical parameters for a chitosan-coated nylon membrane; these predictions can also be applied generally to other capture situations with different requirements. The membrane is also compatible with in situ amplification, which, by eliminating an elution step enables high sensitivity and will facilitate integration of this method into sample-to-answer detection devices. We tested a wide range of combinations of sample volumes and concentrations of DNA molecules using a capture membrane with a 2 mm radius. We show that for nucleic acid detection, this approach can concentrate and detect as few as ∼10 molecules of DNA with flow rates as high as 1 mL/min, handling samples as large as 50 mL. In a specific example, this method reliably concentrated and detected ∼25 molecules of DNA from 50 mL of sample

Mechanistic Evaluation of the Pros and Cons of Digital RT-LAMP for HIV-1 Viral Load Quantification on a Microfluidic Device and Improved Efficiency via a Two-Step Digital Protocol

Here we used a SlipChip microfluidic device to evaluate the performance of digital reverse transcription-loop-mediated isothermal amplification (dRT-LAMP) for quantification of HIV viral RNA. Tests are needed for monitoring HIV viral load to control the emergence of drug resistance and to diagnose acute HIV infections. In resource-limited settings, in vitro measurement of HIV viral load in a simple format is especially needed, and single-molecule counting using a digital format could provide a potential solution. We showed here that when one-step dRT-LAMP is used for quantification of HIV RNA, the digital count is lower than expected and is limited by the yield of desired cDNA. We were able to overcome the limitations by developing a microfluidic protocol to manipulate many single molecules in parallel through a two-step digital process. In the first step we compartmentalize the individual RNA molecules (based on Poisson statistics) and perform reverse transcription on each RNA molecule independently to produce DNA. In the second step, we perform the LAMP amplification on all individual DNA molecules in parallel. Using this new protocol, we increased the absolute efficiency (the ratio between the concentration calculated from the actual count and the expected concentration) of dRT-LAMP 10-fold, from 2% to 23%, by (i) using a more efficient reverse transcriptase, (ii) introducing RNase H to break up the DNA:RNA hybrid, and (iii) adding only the BIP primer during the RT step. We also used this two-step method to quantify HIV RNA purified from four patient samples and found that in some cases, the quantification results were highly sensitive to the sequence of the patient’s HIV RNA. We learned the following three lessons from this work: (i) digital amplification technologies, including dLAMP and dPCR, may give adequate dilution curves and yet have low efficiency, thereby providing quantification values that underestimate the true concentration. Careful validation is essential before a method is considered to provide absolute quantification; (ii) the sensitivity of dLAMP to the sequence of the target nucleic acid necessitates additional validation with patient samples carrying the full spectrum of mutations; (iii) for multistep digital amplification chemistries, such as a combination of reverse transcription with amplification, microfluidic devices may be used to decouple these steps from one another and to perform them under different, individually optimized conditions for improved efficiency

Mechanistic Evaluation of the Pros and Cons of Digital RT-LAMP for HIV‑1 Viral Load Quantification on a Microfluidic Device and Improved Efficiency via a Two-Step Digital Protocol

Here we used a SlipChip microfluidic device to evaluate the performance of digital reverse transcription-loop-mediated isothermal amplification (dRT-LAMP) for quantification of HIV viral RNA. Tests are needed for monitoring HIV viral load to control the emergence of drug resistance and to diagnose acute HIV infections. In resource-limited settings, in vitro measurement of HIV viral load in a simple format is especially needed, and single-molecule counting using a digital format could provide a potential solution. We showed here that when one-step dRT-LAMP is used for quantification of HIV RNA, the digital count is lower than expected and is limited by the yield of desired cDNA. We were able to overcome the limitations by developing a microfluidic protocol to manipulate many single molecules in parallel through a two-step digital process. In the first step we compartmentalize the individual RNA molecules (based on Poisson statistics) and perform reverse transcription on each RNA molecule independently to produce DNA. In the second step, we perform the LAMP amplification on all individual DNA molecules in parallel. Using this new protocol, we increased the absolute efficiency (the ratio between the concentration calculated from the actual count and the expected concentration) of dRT-LAMP 10-fold, from ∼2% to ∼23%, by (i) using a more efficient reverse transcriptase, (ii) introducing RNase H to break up the DNA:RNA hybrid, and (iii) adding only the BIP primer during the RT step. We also used this two-step method to quantify HIV RNA purified from four patient samples and found that in some cases, the quantification results were highly sensitive to the sequence of the patient’s HIV RNA. We learned the following three lessons from this work: (i) digital amplification technologies, including dLAMP and dPCR, may give adequate dilution curves and yet have low efficiency, thereby providing quantification values that underestimate the true concentration. Careful validation is essential before a method is considered to provide absolute quantification; (ii) the sensitivity of dLAMP to the sequence of the target nucleic acid necessitates additional validation with patient samples carrying the full spectrum of mutations; (iii) for multistep digital amplification chemistries, such as a combination of reverse transcription with amplification, microfluidic devices may be used to decouple these steps from one another and to perform them under different, individually optimized conditions for improved efficiency