Tiny Chip Sequences DNA in One Hour

Credit: diginfo.tv

A new chip about half the size of a business card is able to automate all the stages of DNA testing, and could help make personalized treatments more widespread.

To being the DNA testing process, a drop of blood is mixed with a chemical substrate and then dropped onto the chip. The rest of the process is automatic, as the DNA is extracted from the solution and the regions containing the SNPs are cut out and amplified by a technology called PCR. The PCR process, which varies the temperature to cut out the desired sections, takes place in about nine minutes, significantly less time than the previous wait of two hours, and the patient’s SNPs are identified within about an hour instead of three to four days.

Detecting SNPs is an important step in determining the existence of genetically transferred diseases and helps to identify genes related to illnesses.

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