Microfluidic-based DNA purification in a two-stage, dual-phase microchip containing a reversed-phase and a photopolymerized monolith.

In this report, we show that a novel capillary-based photopolymerized monolith offering unprecedented efficiency (approximately 80%) for DNA extraction from submicroliter volumes of whole blood (Wen, J.; Guillo, C.; Ferrance, J. P.; Landers, J. P. Anal. Chem. 2006, 78, 1673-1681) can be translated to microfluidic devices. However, owing to the large mass of protein present in blood, both DNA binding capacity and extraction efficiency were significantly decreased when extraction of DNA was carried out directly from whole blood (38+/-1%). To circumvent this, a novel two-stage microdevice was developed, consisting in a C18 reversed-phase column for protein capture (stage 1) in series with a monolithic column for DNA extraction (stage 2). The two-stage, dual-phase design improves the capability of the monolith for whole blood DNA extraction by approximately 100-fold. From a 10-microL load of whole blood containing 350 ng of DNA, 99% (340+/-10 ng) traverses the C18 phase while approximately 70% (1020+/-45 ug) of protein is retained. A total of 240+/-2 ng of DNA was eluted from the second-stage monolith, resulting in an overall extraction efficiency of 69+/-1%. This provided not only an improvement in extraction efficiency over other chip-based DNA extraction solid phases but also the highest extraction efficiency reported to-date for such sample volumes in a microfluidic device. As an added bonus, the two-stage, dual-phase microdevice allowed the 2-propanol wash step, typically required to remove proteins from the DNA extraction phase for successful PCR, to be completely eliminated, thus streamlining the process without affecting the PCR amplifiability of the extracted DNA.