Week 2- Honey, I Shrunk the Lab!

I've been looking over several papers this week, including Dr. Ruder's research proposal to the ONR (which is confidential) and a more general overview of the "lab on a chip" (LOC). Here's what I read/understood:

I was really hoping they'd shrink me down for the day and have me work like this. Put Rick Moranis in the mix too, and we'd have a Disney movie on our hands. But imagine each scientist here and their respective equipment reduced to a minuscule size and placed on a chip several millimeters in length, They could still carry out the same tests and find the same results, albeit on a smaller scale. You also wouldn't be able to hear them complaining the whole time.

Talk about cutting edge. Not only does the miniaturization of a laboratory like this one save cash and resources, but the liquid dynamics (or microfluidics) involved have countless practical uses. For example, the diagram above shows a chip dealing with the Polymerase Chain Reaction, a process that amplifies a desired portion of DNA. The pathway eventually leads to the electrophoresis section, which separates the DNA into bands. Usually, this requires an agarose gel and an specific electric current separate from the PCR reaction, but in the LOC, it's all integrated. You can trace the entire path(s) from start to finish.

 The small amount of liquid required provides numerous benefits: less waste, shorter diffusion distances, and lower cost, among others, allowing for a fast, efficient, compact system. Electric circuits and programming are both involved in making this possible, but from what I've seen, the circuits aren't terribly complex.

Integrating so many functions on one platform reminds me strangely of a eukaryotic cell and its functionality; both have interconnected pathways that make efficient use of space. And although it's cheap to manufacture in large numbers, I feel like I would lose these things all the time. And that's why I never bought an iPod Shuffle.

Several different LOCs mass produced by Agilent Technologies. The colors most likely code for different integrated tests/analyses. 

What first came to mind for me was if we could engineer LOCs to detect disease. Doctors could run diagnostic tests, especially in third world countries, at a quick and hopefully efficient rate without transporting pounds of lab equipment from village to village. If this could be adapted to work in this context, such technology could drastically change the medical environment.

Despite the kinks that scientists claim they need to work out of LOCs, the fact that one small chip can do so much with so little is ridiculous. Analyze unknown DNA? Detect cancerous cells? Diagnose HIV? Play Pokemon games in high definition? It seems to me the LOCs have become a new medium for which previously studied concepts can be applied. I hope to utilize such a platform for my research once it gets underway in the next few weeks.

Cheers,

Ben