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Thursday, October 8, 2009
3pm (2:45pm refreshments)
RLE Conference Room, 36-428
Microfluidic Technology for Multiplexing Assays with Droplet Libraries
Darren R. Link, PhD, RainDance Technologies, Inc.
ABSTRACT
RainDance Technologies is commercializing the use of picoliter droplets in microfluidic channels for applications in the life sciences. One of the strengths of droplet microfluidics is the ability to achieve the equivalent of highly multiplexed assays while maintaining the sensitivity and specificity of singleplex assays. Multiplexing assays in droplets starts with the generation of a droplet library, which consists of a collection of 10 pL droplets, each encapsulating reagents appropriate for a single test condition. A sample can then be run against all of the test conditions as separate reactions by generating sample droplets and combining them one at a time with library droplets. As the volumes are small and the processing rates are high, it is possible to set-up 1.2 million reactions representing 4000 different assays in less than 10 minutes using only 20 micro-liters of the sample to achieve 300 repeats on each reaction condition. The presentation will review some of the history of RainDance as a company, introduce droplet microfluidics and explore the specific example of using a droplet library to perform PCR reactions to select a portion of the genome for sequencing applications.
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